Tacit Knowledge

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Tacit knowledge is contrasted with explicit or propositional knowledge. Very loosely, tacit knowledge collects all those things that we know how to do but perhaps do not know how to explain (at least symbolically). The term “tacit knowledge” comes to us courtesy of Michael
Polyani, a chemical engineer turned philosopher of science. This biographical detail is not incidental, for Polanyi emerged from his laboratory with the news that the philosophers had scientific practice all wrong: their account of how science proceeds was massively weighted toward the propositional, encoded, formulaic knowledge that is exchanged between laboratories, and almost totally ignorant of the set of skills that are required to actually work in one of those laboratories. …show more content…
Tacit knowledge is messy, difficult to study, regarded as being of negligible epistemic worth. Proper knowledge exists in propositional form (which is, conveniently, much easier to study).
Is a fact the type of thing that could travel without being written down, or otherwise symbolically encoded? For those working with a narrow conception of “fact” that excludes all but propositional formulations, tacit knowledge is (necessarily) not the type of thing that could act as a conduit or vehicle for travelling “facts.” But those who want to argue in this way will need a new word to describe what it is that travels when the technologies of early modernity spread across Europe. The growth of material culture effectively demonstrates that facts about how to make cement, mould and fire porcelain, cut stone, hew oak, and so on, travelled extensively among illiterate, innumerate populations. Some mechanism or other enabled this, and tacit knowledge seems like a good way to talk about it.
Nonetheless, resistance to the concept remains. Not everyone feels that talking about tacit knowledge is either useful or accurate, and some – like Jerry Fodor – doubt whether the term can support its claim to name a particular and distinct type of knowledge. Before
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