ABSTRACT
Michael Polanyi developed his concept of tacit knowing, usually referred to in business-oriented literature under the rubric of ‘tacit knowledge’ (drawing especially on Polanyi 1966), as part of a much wider philosophy, most of which is not usually referred to by writers who use the concept.1 He saw tacit knowing as an irreducible part of personal knowledge. The part of his theory which is most widely known and transmitted states that the greatest part of our knowledge of the world is necessarily inexplicit. The reason for this is that we focus on only a small part of the world at any time, while all of our background knowledge of the rest of the world, while necessary for our unconscious and subconscious calculation of our actions in relation to the world, must remain implicit in order not to distract us from the focus of our conscious attention. Whatever we learn about the world, those things which we learn by deliberate instruction, as well as those which we acquire by subliminal familiarity, become part of our fund of personal knowledge. Tacit knowing is therefore not reducible to that part of knowledge which arises within and is drawn on in specific specialist contexts. There is a core of personal knowledge in every life situation and every practice, no matter how ubiquitous and universally applicable it may be. Tacit knowing is sometimes perceived to be specific to special kinds of situations because it is often in the confrontation of individuals with different experience that conflicting assumptions rooted in different funds of tacit knowledge may be exposed.
