Tacit Knowledge: The Individual’s Discovery of Eternal Purpose
I moved into my place in Sequim nearly a year ago, and with moving comes the seemingly endless unpacking. For me, every box was an adventure of new or a rediscovery of a different life. Some boxes revealed my life before I had a passport, while others were filled with treasures from previous generations. One of the most revealing discoveries I found was in the numerous boxes of old documents. You know the ones, those that you have to keep until the appointed time when they can be shredded. There among the decades of papers doomed for destruction I found notes, old journals, and random thoughts that echoed the themes running through my NPO. At that moment I had no words to explain the connections.[1] Could this be an example of my own scientific tacit knowledge discovery journey? [2] Have the professional and ministerial decisions been a “compelling…sequence of choices” meant to “transform” [3] me into the person who can reveal the truths hidden within my NPO?[4] Could it be that all the pressure, struggle, perseverance required in this program was the crucible [5] used to produce the actualization necessary for me to find the words to my own tacit knowledge?[6]
The Tacit Dimension, [7] by Michael Polanyi, the younger brother of Karl Polanyi and the author of The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. [8] The Austrian Hungarian Jewish brothers inherited their mother’s curiosity, debate, and interest in political issues that influence the culture.[9] Although, their father died while Karl and Michael were in their teens, they both impacted by his “stalwart moral integrity.”[10] Michael’s perceptive developed out of his experience as a physician,[11] and as an esteemed physical chemist.[12] Michael published The Tacit Dimension,[13] as “a response to Soviet instrumentalization of science,”[14] he had observed during his 1935 visit to Moscow. Michael believed this to be a compromise of free scientific thought and ultimately the destruction of any new discoveries.[15] Michael’s support of free thought posed to be the philosophical divide with Karl’s appreciation of socialisms economic constructs.[16] This divide created the space for the brothers to develop their own differentiated philosophical view.[17] I cannot help but wonder if this contributed to the brother’s ability provide us with the opposing views necessary to see more clearly? It is as if, each one’s scientific pursuit of their own tacit “hidden reality” reveal for us “future discoveries.” [18]
In The Tacit Dimension, Polanyi examines the social, scientific, economic, and philosophic thought into how people know more than they are able to express while having a need to uncover hidden truths. The book comprises lectures, within the three chapters of the book, take a systematic approach through varies social scientific examples. Polanyi, emphasizes the need for freedom of thought to create the environment for creative and new discoveries.[19] These new discoveries in science and elsewhere are to undergo peer review, free from government of interference.[20]
My reflection on this book leaves me with this spiritual thought: God created each person with the seeds necessary to address specific issues. Those seeds are at the very core of a person’s being, tacit knowledge. That individual is driven by “a need” for “a purpose which bears…eternity.” [21]
“…He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the
whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11[22]
[1] Michael Polanyi and Amartya Sen, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 4.
[2] Ibid., 79.
[3] Ibid., 80.
[4] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension.
[5] Tod E. Bolsinger, Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020).
[6] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension, 89.
[7] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension.
[8] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, 2nd Beacon Paperback ed (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001).
[9] Walter Gulick, “Michael and Karl Polanyi: Conflict and Convergence,” Political Science Reviewer 37 (2008): 14.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., 17.
[12] Helicon, “Polanyi, Michael (1891-1976),” in The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography, n.d., https://search-credoreference-com.georgefox.idm.oclc.org/content/entry/hdsb/polanyi_michael_1891_1976/0.
[13] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension.
[14] Park Doing, “Review: The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi and Tacit and Explicit Knowledge by Harry Collins,” Social Studies of Science 41, no. 2 (April 2011): 301, https:// www.jstor.org/stable/41301906.
[15] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension, 3.
[16] Gulick, “Michael and Karl Polanyi: Conflict and Convergence,” 21.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension, 82.
[19] Ibid., 77.
[20] Ibid., 83.
[21] Ibid., 92.
[22] Tyndale House Publishers, Holy Bible: New Living Translation. (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), 539.
About the Author
Denise Johnson
Special Education teacher K-12, School Counselor K-12, Overseas field worker in Poland,9 responses to “Tacit Knowledge: The Individual’s Discovery of Eternal Purpose”
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Hi Denise. Thank you for your very thoughtful and engaging post on Polanyi’s work. Your opening questions to yourself as you reflected on your discovery of papers long stored away dovetailed in an inspiring way with your closing summary and quote from Ecclesiastes. Thank you for that. What in the NPO journey are you finding most helpful to explicitly articulate the tacit knowledge that has been seeded in you by the Holy Spirit?
Elmarie,
I think for me, discipleship has been overcomplicated. Leaders have been in search of the right curriculum or teaching when the Holy Spirit knows each person and what God is desiring to develop within that person. What if we, as leaders, found a way to work with the Holy Spirit in an experiential way verses just implementing another curriculum?
Ms. Denise: Polanyi, “emphasizes the need for freedom of thought to create the environment for creative and new discoveries.” I also liked this point of his. He isn’t one that likes to be constrained. It made me wonder about his spirituality. Does he see the freedom that faith in Christ gives? Maybe he came to that point of faith by the end of his life. This was a good, but difficult book to get through but I’m glad Jason added it to our list.
Troy,
I do not know about his faith per se, but I do know that his paternal grandfather was a rabbi. I am sure that he was greatly impacted by the Old Testament and God’s free will at creation.
Denise: I love how you were given a tangible example of this weeks reading in the discovery of your prior notes, journals, etc. As you described these bothers, comparing and contrasting their worldviews, I couldn’t help but think — their poor mother having to navigate them growing up!
When you talk about every person having specific seeds in them, it made me think of the several passages that talk about people having scales over their eyes. I wonder if there’s a similar connection there in that scales fall off eyes at appointed times to see what was unseen before.
I hope the recent discoveries for you have given you a new energy and clearer direction as you continue on your NPO.
Kayli,
Great thought about the scales. I wonder if the scales falling off is related to an individual’s willingness to abide in the presence of the Father. And to allow the Holy Spirit to shape the person’s perspective.
Thanks Denise. That is a fascinating (and timely) connection!
From what you saw, that you already had or wrote long ago, confirmed or informed your NPO?
Eric,
Great question. Unfortunately, when I thought about the connect it was when I was unpacking in December. There has been a bit too much other input since then that I do not remember the specifics.
Denise, I so love the whimsy in your writing! It brings me in and allows me to share the space with you.
If you were to take a tacit guess….what might Polanyi say about general revelation and special revelation?