The Great Depressio N

How to Improve Tacit Knowledge

M "Radar" Browne-Middleton

Antioch University McGregor, Managerial Economics, MGT Ð'- 641

May 8, 2007

"We can see now how an unbridled lucidity can destroy our understanding of

complex matters. Scrutinize closely the particulars of a comprehensive

entity and their meaning is effaced, our conception of the entity is

destroyed."

"The damage done by the specification of particulars may be irremediable.

Meticulous detailing may obscure beyond recall a subject like history,

literature or philosophy. Speaking more generally, the belief that, since

particulars are more tangible, their knowledge offers a true conception of

things is fundamentally mistaken".

"My examples show clearly that, in general, an explicit integration cannot

replace its tacit counterpart. The skill of a driver cannot be replaced by

a thorough schooling in the theory of the motorcar; the knowledge I have

of my own body differs altogether from the knowledge of its physiology;

and the rules of rhytming and prosody do not tell me what a poem told me,

without any knowledge of its rules.

We are approaching here a crucial question. The declared aim of modern

science is to establish a strictly detached, objective knowledge. Any

failing short of this ideal is accepted only as a temporary imperfection,

which we must aim at eliminating. But suppose that the tacit thought

forms an indispensable part of all knowledge, then the ideal of eliminating

all personal elements of knowledge would, in effect, aim at the destruction

of all knowledge. The ideal of exact science would turn out to be

fundamentally

misleading and possibly a source of DEVASTATING FALACIES.

I think I can show that the process of formalizing all knowledge to the

exclusion of any tacit knowing is self-defeating..."

"The first emergence by which life comes into existence is the prototype of

all subsequent stages of evolution, by which rising forms of life, with their

higher principles emerge into existence. I have included all stages of

emergence in an enlarged conception of inventiveness achieved by tacit

knowledge".

Concluding:

I hope that I have proved that when dealing with concepts that others have

created is always needed to go back to the sources, instead of trying to

"assimilate" (and in some cases destroy) those ideas within the scope of a

predefined and valued theory.

Coming back to the unlearning question, I have already said, and I repeat,

a quotation from Pope: "there are people that never learn because they

understand everything too quickly". To understand everything too quickly

applies whenever one "understands everything" within the frames of a

particular theory, whenever one doesn't give oneself the time to go to the

sources, or even to understand what a fellow learner is saying, IN THE

TERMS OF THE SPEAKER (and not only in the terms of the listener), whenever

one in unable to UNLEARN their previous theories, and change them when

that is needed to accommodate different views. This type of attitudes can

also (and that is much worse) inhibit others from reflecting and learning

themselves.

Unbridled detailing, the ideal advocated by Laplace and his modern followers, not only destroys our knowledge of things we most want to know; it clouds our understanding of elementary perception - our first contact with the world of inanimate matter and of living beings and our initial act of self-transcendence. [A] Against the self-destructive commitment to ultimate lucidity, I propose the theory of tacit knowing. A theory of knowledge which endorses our capacities for understanding transcendence in the world will be found to establish self-transcendence.

I look at my hand, another face, or a machine. I recognize its area by its enclosed contours, by the relation between the object itself and its background within my field of vision. While I attend to the object itself I am relying on multiple clues - shapes, colours, extensions, perhaps in changing relations to each other. But I do not focus directly on each aspect of the object in its field. I have awareness of many of these aspects of the whole. In the case of the human face I rely on an awareness of its many features for attending to the characteristic appearance of a particular physiognomy. Attending to the details implicitly while focally addressing myself to the whole, I integrate the features into the cast they jointly form. The act of perception, therefore, comprises two types of awareness. I have subsidiary awareness of multiple facial features while I integrate these aspects into the face as a whole to which I attend focally. I perceive things through the dual activity of subsidiary and focal awareness. This is, in outline, the theory of tacit knowing.

Subsidiary awareness is controlled by focal awareness. The first type of awareness leaves itself open to the integrating function of the second.