The Tacit Dimension — Review
The book is primarily about knowledge management; especially tacit knowledge and is written by Michael Polanyi in 1996. He was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. The book revolves around several important aspects of tacit knowledge and its nature. It also distinguishes tacit knowledge from other forms by stating the properties and the way in which our body responds to semantic knowledge. Polanyi narrates the content not only from a knowledge management perspective but also from a philosopher’s perspective. He cites several examples to make the reader understand the properties of tacit knowledge and how it resides in our minds.
The book is a must-read one in the field of knowledge management and it is primarily divided into three main sections, the first one being about ‘Tacit knowing’, the second one is about ‘Emergence’ and the third part is completely about the ‘Society of explorers’. The book starts with how pure science was rejected by the famous theoretician of the Communist party, Bukharin, in 1935. The author borrows the concept of gestalt psychology to explain the concept of tacit knowledge. He states that ‘we can know more than what we can tell’. By this, he means that there are certain forms of knowledge that reside in one’s conscious mind and cannot be transferred to another person easily. Those are some kind of instincts that allows a person to act according to the stimuli. In the book, Polanyi takes the example of recognizing a person among millions. The person has the ability to do this, but this ability cannot be transferred to anyone. This knowledge exists in tacit form, unlike the explicit form, this is embodied deep inside one’s mind. Polanyi explains that there are mainly four aspects of tacit knowing; namely functional, phenomenal, semantic, and ontological.
The functional structure of tacit knowledge is the process of matching the features of the person. We know the features of the person and are able to compare and match those features among millions of people. On the other hand, the phenomenal aspect is more of an understanding part or apprehension. This means that we know we will recognize a person among the crowd based on the features. The third aspect is the semantic form, where we convert from meaningless feelings to meaningful ones. The author takes the example of using a walking stick by a blind person. Although he is not using his hand directly or not touching the surface to get the idea of the place, he uses the stick to understand where is standing. When he uses the tool to get the haptic feedback using the stick, he can indirectly get the sense of the place by placing the stick on the surface. The sense of the impact of touching on the surface by the stick is transferred to his hands. This is called semantic knowing. The fourth aspect is the ontological approach where we are able to know the person after identifying. Ontological knowing is basically the understanding of the entity based on the features or particulars.
Polanyi also explains the concept of subception with the example of syllables and shock experiments. He says that the subject was given a shock whenever he says a particular syllable, but eventually, the subject was able to avoid the shock by not saying that syllable. All these were happening involuntarily without the knowledge of the person, and he did not know how this happened. He was successfully able to avoid the shock. This is termed as subception which was an example of tacit knowing.
The author again states an example of playing the piano. Professional pianists can play the keys with high accuracy, speed, and correct pressure at the right time. This is in a tacit form where the professional play it seamlessly without any error. They call it ‘the fingers know their way’. It is not possible to pay attention to all the aspects simultaneously, if one tries to do so, then several mistakes would arise. This is a type of activity that involves a tacit form of knowledge and comes through long term practice and performance. This is similar to activities like walking, driving a car, etc. All of these are mastered through repeated action. So, rehearsing the process until it becomes tacit knowledge is called internalization. The process becomes involuntary after internalization, and in order to make it perfect, repeated practice is necessary.
The book is actually helpful to a knowledge management aspirant who wishes to understand the real meaning of tacit knowledge. The author, Michael Polanyi, has properly written and explained every aspect of tacit knowledge by connecting and borrowing the psychological aspects and theories. He has really succeeded in comparing these because tacit knowledge is a part of one’s mind and is inseparable. So, it is really important to follow Polanyi’s path in order to understand the real concepts behind tacit knowledge.
