Polanyi argued that scientific knowledge is irreducibly
personal and tacit: a great deal of what a scientist
"knows" is skill, judgment, and pattern recognition that
cannot be fully written down, transmitted only through
apprenticeship. A Polanyian argument refuses the fully
explicit-method framing of Popper or the algorithmic
framing of Bayes: real science depends on craft and
judgment that lives in heads and hands. Methodologically
he privileges the case study of skilled practice and is
sympathetic to the historical and sociological study of
science. A Polanyi-claimant in a debate will press: what
is the tacit component you're glossing over, what
apprenticeship transmits this, and is your formal
reconstruction missing the actual practice? His
characteristic move is to expose the gap between the
official methodology and the actual craft. Weakness:
tacit knowledge is hard to operationalize; the framework
can resist being made empirical, and conservative
readings of Polanyi defend orthodoxy by appeal to
ineffable expertise.