Book: The Tacit Dimension

Overview
"The Tacit Dimension" articulates Michael Polanyi's argument that much of human knowing is tacit: knowledge that cannot be fully articulated but is nevertheless real and essential. He insists that knowing always involves personal commitment and an active, integrative grasp that transcends explicit rules and statements.
Polanyi frames tacit knowledge as a complement to explicit knowledge, arguing that verbalizable propositions depend on a background of skillful, embodied, and context-sensitive understanding. The book traces how tacit elements operate across perception, skill, scientific discovery, and social practices.

Tacit Knowledge and Knowing
Tacit knowledge is described as the kind of knowing that shows itself through performed action and intuitive grasp rather than through explicit formulation. Examples include the ability to ride a bicycle, recognize a face, or discern the significance of experimental results; these capacities are learned and exercised without complete verbalization.
Polanyi emphasizes that tacit knowing is not merely ignorance or opacity but a positive cognitive mode: it is integrative and operates by directing attention from subsidiary details toward a focal purpose or meaning. This structure makes tacit knowledge indispensable for understanding and producing explicit knowledge.

Subsidiary and Focal Awareness
A central distinction is between subsidiary awareness, the background cues and skills we attend from, and focal awareness, the object of our attention. When a craftsman uses tools, the grip and balance are subsidiarily known while the finished work remains the focus; the subsidiary background enables the focal achievement.
This interplay explains why direct articulation of every component of expertise is impossible: one attends through the background rather than to it. Polanyi argues that the reliability of knowing depends on this trust in the subsidiary system, which guides and grounds focused insight.

Role in Science and Discovery
Polanyi challenges a purely procedural view of science by showing that discovery relies heavily on tacit judgment, intuitive recognition, and personal commitment. Scientists often pursue hunches and make heuristic moves that cannot be fully justified by formal methods alone; successful research depends on a fusion of skill, taste, and contextual understanding.
He insists that scientific objectivity does not eliminate personal elements but requires disciplined judgment exercised within communities of practice. Peer critique, replication, and shared standards transform individual tacit insights into publicly accepted knowledge without erasing the tacit roots of discovery.

Personal Judgment, Tradition, and Community
Knowledge is portrayed as inherently personal because it depends on an individual's acts of attention and commitment, yet it is also social through tradition and communal evaluation. Traditions transmit tacit skills and frameworks that guide inquiry, and communities preserve and refine the standards by which judgments are tested.
Polanyi highlights the tension between personal authority and communal validation: solitary intuition must be subjected to public scrutiny to gain credibility, but communities themselves rely on tacit norms and apprenticeship to educate competent participants.

Implications and Legacy
The account of tacit knowledge has broad implications for epistemology, philosophy of science, education, and organizational theory. It reframes rationality as including non-formal dimensions, underlines the limits of explicit instruction, and spotlights the importance of mentorship, practice, and interpretive skill.
Polanyi's insights influenced later work on knowledge management, embodied cognition, and the sociology of scientific knowledge by foregrounding the unseen, skillful components of knowing. The core claim endures: understanding human knowledge requires attention to what we can do and appreciate but cannot wholly put into words.