Monday, 8 June 2009

THEORIES...Michael Polanyi and tacit knowledge...

TACIT KNOWLEDGE

Polanyi's argument was that the informed guesses, hunches and imaginings that are part of exploratory acts are motivated by what he describes as 'passions'. They might well be aimed at discovering 'truth', but they are not necessarily in a form that can be stated in propositional or formal terms. As Michael Polanyi (1967: 4) wrote in The Tacit Dimension, we should start from the fact that 'we can know more than we can tell'. He termed this pre-logical phase of knowing as 'tacit knowledge'. Tacit knowledge comprises a range of conceptual and sensory information and images that can be brought to bear in an attempt to make sense of something (see Hodgkin 1991). Many bits of tacit knowledge can be brought together to help form a new model or theory.

(http://www.infed.org/thinkers/polanyi.htm#intro)


jovi schnell

Tacit Knowledge Adrift on the Myth of Progress
gouache on paper
41.5" x 21.5"2007

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