Rethinking Michael Polanyi's Realism: From Personal Knowledge to Intersubjectively Viable Communication

Abstract

Fifty years after the publication of Michael Polanyi's magnum opus, Personal Knowledge, the fashion for Knowledge Management (KM) has helped to institutionalise a redefinition of his distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. But KM's redefinition of Polanyi's argument misrepresents his insights into the process of personal tacit ‘knowing’ and overlooks the implications of his faith in metaphysical ‘being’. This paper explores the significance of Polanyi's original concept of tacit knowledge, together with the consequences of assuming a ‘vertical’ connection between personal knowledge and faith in an unknowable absolute truth. By using faith to protect personal knowledge from the charge of subjectivism, Polanyi precluded the possibility that different people, who interact in different contexts and believe in different things, could develop viable modes of knowing and learning. However, rethinking Polanyi's philosophy with regard to Ernst von Glasersfeld's radical constructivism, which is derived from intersubjectively viable ‘horizontal’ communication, allows the virtues of tacit knowledge to be separated from the complications of metaphysical realism.

Keywords:

• communication
• knowledge management
• radical constructivism
• tacit knowledge
• truth

Notes

1. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post‐Critical Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1974. (First published in 1958.)

2. Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA, 1983. (First published in 1966.)

3. Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, The Knowledge‐Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, p. 9.

4. Ibid, p. 64.

5. Ibid, p. 8.

6. Ikujiro Nonaka, ‘The knowledge‐creating company’, in Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka (eds), Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management, Wiley, Singapore, 2004, pp. 29–46 at p. 36.

7. Haridimos Tsoukas, ‘Do we really understand tacit knowledge?’, in Mark Easterby‐Smith and Marjorie Lyles (eds), The Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2003, pp. 410–27 at pp. 419–21.

8. Ibid, p. 422.

9. Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, IN, 1998, p. 131.

10. Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1959, p. 68.

11. Polanyi, 1974, op. cit., p. 299 (original emphasis).

12. Ibid, p. 309 (original emphasis).

13. Ibid, p. 315.

14. Ibid, p. 266 (emphasis added).

15. Ernst von Glasersfeld, Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning, RoutledgeFalmer, London, 2002.

16. Nonaka and Takeuchi, op. cit., p. 60.

17. Polanyi, 1983, op. cit., p. 4 (original emphasis).

18. Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1977, p. 62. (First published 1975.)

19. Ronald Hall, ‘Wittgenstein and Polanyi: the problem of privileged self‐knowledge’, Philosophy Today, 23, 3, 1979, pp. 267–78.

20. Nonaka and Takeuchi, op. cit., p. 60.

21. William Taussig Scott and Martin Moleski, Michael Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, p. 12. The sixth child ‘Pali’ was said to be mentally retarded and apparently died in late adolescence.

22. See: ‘The Polanyis’, in Peter Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander, Transaction, New Brunswick, NJ, pp. 123–40 at p. 126.

23. Mark Mitchell, Michael Polanyi, ISI Books, Wilmington, DE, 2006, pp. 10 and 118.

24. Polanyi, 1998, op. cit., p. 107.

25. Michael Polanyi, ‘The Republic of Science: its political and economic theory’, Minerva, 1, 1, 1962, pp. 54–73.

26. Ibid, p. 54.

27. Ibid, p. 60.

28. Letter from Polanyi to his Manchester friend and colleague, Hugh O'Neill; quoted in Mitchell, op. cit., p. 15.

29. Polanyi, 1959, op. cit., p. 27.

30. Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964.

31. Ibid, p. 84.

32. Zdzislaw Najder, ‘“Moral inversion”‐or moral revaluation?’, in Thomas Langford and William Poteat (eds), Intellect and Hope: Essays in the Thought of Michael Polanyi, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, pp. 364–85 at p. 372.

33. Mitchell, op. cit., p. 119.

34. Michael Polanyi, ‘Sense‐giving and sense‐reading’, in Marjorie Grene (ed.), Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1969, pp. 181–207 at p. 195 (original emphasis).

35. Michael Polanyi, ‘Life's irreducible structure’, in Grene (ed.), op. cit., pp. 225–39 at p. 233.

36. Ibid, p. 233.

37. Polanyi, 1983, op. cit., pp. 32–3.

38. Ibid, pp. 62 and 92.

39. E. P. Wigner and R. A. Hodgkin, ‘Michael Polanyi: 12 March 1891–22 February 1976’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 23, November 1977, pp. 413–48 at p. 434.

40. Polanyi, 1974, op. cit., p. 64.

41. Ibid, p. 214.

42. Ibid, p. 405.

43. Wigner and Hodgkin, op. cit., pp. 34–5.

44. Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, Penguin/Allen Lane, London, 2005.

45. Gary Klein, The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work, Currency Books, New York, NY, 2004, p. 293.

46. Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, Penguin Books, London, 1999, pp. 125–6.

47. See discussion of ‘generalization’ in Glasersfeld, 2002, op. cit., pp. 92–3.

48. See discussion of ‘justice’ in Polanyi, 1974, op. cit., p. 116.

49. Ibid, pp. 69–131.

50. Scott and Moleski, op. cit., pp. 145–6.

51. Polanyi and Prosch, op. cit., p. 37.

52. Nonaka and Takeuchi, op. cit., p. 60.

53. Mark Easterby‐Smith and Marjorie Lyles, ‘Introduction’, in Easterby‐Smith and Lyles, op. cit., note 5, pp. 1–15 at pp. 11–2 (original emphasis).

54. J.‐C. Spender and Andreas Georg Scherer, ‘The philosophical foundations of knowledge management: editors introduction’, Organization, 14, 1, 2007, p. 5.

55. Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, ‘Preface’, in Takeuchi and Nonaka, op. cit., pp. i–xiii at p. ix.

56. Nonaka and Takeuchi, op. cit., p. 8.

57. Ibid, p. 9.

58. Ibid, p. 8.

59. Hall, op. cit.

60. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, Oxford, 2001.

61. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, Penguin, London, 2000, p. 17.

62. Ibid, p. 149.

63. Nonaka and Takeuchi, op. cit., pp. 238–9.

64. Polanyi, 1983, op. cit., p. 22.

65. Scott and Moleski, op. cit., dustcover note ‘About the Authors’.

66. Glasersfeld, 2002, op. cit. p. 1.

67. Ibid, p. 18.

68. Ibid.

69. Ernst von Glasersfeld, ‘You have to be two to start: rational thoughts about love’, Constructivist Foundations, 2, 1, 2006, pp. 1–5 at p. 4.

70. Glasersfeld, 2002, op. cit., p. 145.

71. Ibid, p. 75n.

72. Ibid, p. 113.

73. Quoted by Glasersfeld, 2006, op. cit., p. 2.

74. Glasersfeld, 2002, op. cit., p. 117.

75. Albert Einstein, ‘Physics and reality’, in Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, Three Rivers, New York, NY, 1982, pp. 290–323 at p. 290.

76. Glasersfeld, 2002, op. cit., p. 3.

77. Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, Springer, New York, NY, 2003, p. 191.