The art of thinking · Knowledge and expertise
Tacit knowledge
Also known as: Implicit knowledge, Personal knowledge, Know-how
German: implizites Wissen
In philosophy and knowledge management, tacit knowledge is knowledge that a person uses but can’t fully put into words — skills, judgment, recognition — summed up by the chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi as “we can know more than we can tell”.
- Thinking models
- Philosophy
In one sentence
Tacit knowledge is what people know and use but can’t fully say — Polanyi’s “we can know more than we can tell”.
Example
An experienced operator “hears” when the sealing jaw is misaligned. The interview yields no rule until the writer asks the operator to describe the sound and the next three things she checks.
How it applies
- Polanyi’s argument: We recognize a face among thousands without being able to say how; we ride a bicycle without knowing the physics we obey. Polanyi held that all knowledge rests on such tacit integration of particulars we attend from toward what we attend to.
- Knowing how and knowing that: Gilbert Ryle’s distinction (1949) is related: knowing how to do something is not reducible to knowing facts about it.
- Knowledge management: Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) built their SECI model on converting tacit into explicit knowledge and back (socialization, externalization, combination, internalization). Critics note that Polanyi saw some knowledge as tacit in principle, not only not yet written down.
- Technical documentation: SME interviews retrieve explicit knowledge easily and tacit knowledge hardly at all. Observation, walking through real cases, asking for cues and exceptions, and methods such as cognitive task analysis get closer to it — and some of it stays a matter of training, not text.
Tacit knowledge vs. undocumented knowledge
Undocumented knowledge could be written down but hasn’t been; tacit knowledge resists being written down. Treating the second like the first produces instructions that are complete on paper and useless at the machine.
How to read this pool
Entries, context cards and transitional topics
The art of thinking explains ways of thinking — where a method comes from, what it asks of you and how it was adapted later. You meet four kinds of content here, each with its own job:
- Glossary entry
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- Transitional topicBridges both pools
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- Reference entry or context card
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