Much of what humans know we cannot say. And much of what we do we cannot describe. For example, how do we know how to ride a bike when we can’t explain how we do it? Abilities like this were called “tacit knowledge” by physical chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, but here Harry Collins analyzes the term, and the behavior, in much greater detail, often departing from Polanyi’s treatment. In Tacit and Explicit Knowledge, Collins develops a common conceptual language to bridge the concept’s disparate domains by explaining explicit knowledge and classifying tacit knowledge. Collins then teases apart the three very different meanings, which, until now, all fell under the umbrella of Polanyi’s term: relational tacit knowledge (things we could describe in principle if someone put effort into describing them), somatic tacit knowledge (things our bodies can do but we cannot describe how, like balancing on a bike), and collective tacit knowledge (knowledge we draw that is the property of society, such as the rules for language). Thus, bicycle riding consists of some somatic tacit knowledge and some collective tacit knowledge, such as the knowledge that allows us to navigate in traffic. The intermixing of the three kinds of tacit knowledge has led to confusion in the past; Collins’s book will at last unravel the complexities of the idea. Tacit knowledge drives everything from language, science, education, and management to sport, bicycle riding, art, and our interaction with technology. In Collins’s able hands, it also functions at last as a framework for understanding human behavior in a range of disciplines.

Tacit knowledge is the form of implicit knowledge that we rely on for learning. It is invoked in a wide range of intellectual inquiries, from traditional academic subjects to more pragmatically orientated investigations into the nature and transmission of skills and expertise. Notwithstanding its apparent pervasiveness, the notion of tacit knowledge is a complex and puzzling one. What is its status as knowledge? What is its relation to explicit knowledge? What does it mean to say that knowledge is tacit? Can it be measured? Recent years have seen a growing interest from philosophers in understanding the nature of tacit knowledge. Philosophers of science have discussed its role in scientific problem-solving; philosophers of language have been concerned with the speaker's relation to grammatical theories; and phenomenologists have attempted to describe the relation of explicit theoretical knowledge to a background understanding of matters that are taken for granted. This book seeks to bring a unity to these diverse philosophical discussions by clarifying their conceptual underpinnings. In addition the book advances a specific account of tacit knowledge that elucidates the importance of the concept for understanding the character of human cognition, and demonstrates the relevance of the recommended account to those concerned with the communication of expertise. The book will be of interest to philosophers of language, epistemologists, cognitive psychologists and students of theoretical linguistics.

"The Tacit Dimension" argues that tacit knowledge -tradition, inherited practices, implied values, and prejudgments- is a crucial part of scientific knowledge. This volume challenges the assumption that skepticism, rather than established belief, lies at the heart of scientific discovery.

Knowledge management expert Jon-Arild Johannessen presents a comprehensive exploration of tacit knowledge based on the research problem: How can tacit knowledge be used to improve organizational performance in practice?

This book outlines a new account of the tacit, meaning tacit knowledge, presuppositions, practices, traditions, and so forth. It includes essays on topics such as underdetermination and mutual understanding, and critical discussions of the major alternative approaches to the tacit, including Bourdieu’s habitus and various practice theories, Oakeshott’s account of tradition, Quentin Skinner’s theory of historical meaning, Harry Collins’s idea of collective tacit knowledge, as well as discussions of relevant cognitive science concepts, such as non-conceptual content, connectionism, and mirror neurons. The new account of tacit knowledge focuses on the fact that in making the tacit explicit, a person is not, as many past accounts have supposed, reading off the content of some sort of shared and fixed tacit scheme of presuppositions, but rather responding to the needs of the Other for understanding.

Students tend to steer away from classes that have a high technical content such as science, mathematics, engineering, the medical professions and anything where equations (how about economics?) play an important role. My message is deceptively simple; in order to gain real comprehension over a difficult subject, you need to know how your brain works. One successful approach to understanding your mind applies the philosophical viewpoint of Michael Polanyi's tacit theory of knowledge. This book introduces the need for your mind to create "tacit integrations" and explains how to attain what we call the "Aha" experience. Useful to teachers, coaches, and students, this learning methodology explains the behaviors needed for the attainment of full comprehension in either formal or informal learning situations. Polanyi was a brilliant research chemist who in later years turned his attention to explicating a personal philosophy of science. His self-reflections on how he created discoveries in chemistry offers illumination today into how our own minds work. The recognition of a subconscious level of mental activity (intuition and insight) is becoming a contemporary research topic and this book finds parallels between Polanyi and recent breakthroughs in cognitive psychology and selected neuroscience research. His tacit theory of knowledge, largely ignored among educational practitioners, is still alive today within knowledge management, medical training, and theological philosophy. This oversight is a shame and needs corrected. If you have no idea what is meant by a tacit integration (along with the necessary background for understanding it), you are missing valuable insights that show how you can put your brain into high gear. The tacit theory of knowledge informs constructivism and brings alive the dichotomy between explicit and implicit learning (also declarative and procedural knowledge). Polanyi died worried that his work would die with him. Let's not allow that to continue! Discovering how to apply tacit knowledge in learning and teaching can be a rewarding experience.

The fully revised and updated version of this successful Handbook is welcomed by management scholars world-wide. By bringing together the latest approaches from the leading experts in organizational learning & knowledge management the volume provides a unique and valuable overview of current thinking about how organizations accumulate 'knowledge' and learn from experience. Key areas of update in the new edition are: Resource based view of the firm Capability management Global management Organizational culture Mergers & acquisitions Strategic management Leadership

This book presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. The concept of a practice, understood broadly as a tacit possession that is 'shared' by and the same for different people, has a fatal difficulty, the author argues. This object must in some way be transmitted, 'reproduced', in Bourdieu's famous phrase, in different persons. But there is no plausible mechanism by which such a process occurs. The historical uses of the concept, from Durkheim to Kripke's version of Wittgenstein, provide examples of the contortions that thinkers have been forced into by this problem, and show the ultimate implausibility of the idea of the interpersonal transmission of these supposed objects. Without the notion of 'sameness' the concept of practice collapses into the concept of habit. The conclusion sketches a picture of what happens when we do without the notion of a shared practice, and how this bears on social theory and philosophy. It explains why social theory cannot get beyond the stage of constructing fuzzy analogies, and why the standard constructions of the contemporary philosophical problem of relativism depend upon this defective notion.