We know more than we can tell
Polanyi's core claim is that much of what we know cannot be fully stated in explicit rules, as with recognizing a face or riding a bike. Knowledge always outruns articulation.
The Tacit Dimension
6 ideas
Attending from subsidiaries to a focus
In tacit knowing we attend from many subsidiary particulars, like the feel of a tool in hand, to a focal whole we are trying to grasp. Naming or dissecting the particulars breaks the meaning they jointly bear.
Indwelling in the tools of knowing
We interiorize instruments, skills, and theories, dwelling in them so they become extensions of our body and perception. Knowing something means inhabiting it rather than observing it from outside.
The paradox of the Meno resolved
Polanyi answers how we can seek an unknown answer: a tacit foreshadowing of the solution guides discovery before it is fully known. Genuine problems are felt as a coherent gap tacitly sensed.
Emergence and hierarchical reality
Higher levels of reality, life, mind, meaning, cannot be reduced to the laws of the lower levels they rest on. Polanyi uses tacit knowing to argue against a fully reductionist, impersonal science.
All knowledge is personal
Because tacit judgment is unavoidable, even the most rigorous science involves the knower's committed, personal participation. Objectivity is not the absence of the person but responsible personal knowing.