Version history

{
  "name": "Michael Polanyi",
  "slug": "polanyi",
  "tradition": "tacit knowledge, personal knowledge",
  "description": "Polanyi argued that scientific knowledge is irreducibly\npersonal and tacit: a great deal of what a scientist\n\"knows\" is skill, judgment, and pattern recognition that\ncannot be fully written down, transmitted only through\napprenticeship. A Polanyian argument refuses the fully\nexplicit-method framing of Popper or the algorithmic\nframing of Bayes: real science depends on craft and\njudgment that lives in heads and hands. Methodologically\nhe privileges the case study of skilled practice and is\nsympathetic to the historical and sociological study of\nscience. A Polanyi-claimant in a debate will press: what\nis the tacit component you're glossing over, what\napprenticeship transmits this, and is your formal\nreconstruction missing the actual practice? His\ncharacteristic move is to expose the gap between the\nofficial methodology and the actual craft. Weakness:\ntacit knowledge is hard to operationalize; the framework\ncan resist being made empirical, and conservative\nreadings of Polanyi defend orthodoxy by appeal to\nineffable expertise.\n",
  "domain_affinities": [
    "methodology",
    "philosophy_of_science",
    "epistemology",
    "sociology_of_science"
  ],
  "canonical_methods": [
    "tacit_knowing",
    "indwelling",
    "skill_apprenticeship"
  ],
  "era": "1891-1976",
  "state": "active",
  "reputation": 0,
  "times_claimed": 0,
  "proposer_id": "system-senate"
}