What Documents Cannot Do: Revisiting Michael Polanyi and the Tacit Knowledge Dilemma

Our culture is dominated by digital documents in ways that are easy to overlook. These documents have changed our worldviews about science and have raised our expectations of them as tools for knowledge justification. This article explores the complexities surrounding the digital document by revisit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Information & culture 2021-01, Vol.56 (1), p.90-104
Main Author: Burns, C. Sean
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American literature
Analysis
Criticism and interpretation
Dilemma
Electronic documents
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)
Metaphor
Open access
Philosophers
Polanyi, Michael
Science
Software
Tacit knowledge
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Summary:Our culture is dominated by digital documents in ways that are easy to overlook. These documents have changed our worldviews about science and have raised our expectations of them as tools for knowledge justification. This article explores the complexities surrounding the digital document by revisiting Michael Polanyi's theory of tacit knowledge--the idea that "we can know more than we can tell." The theory presents to us a dilemma: if we can know more than we can tell, then this means that the communication of science via the document as a primary form of telling will always be incomplete. This dilemma presents significant challenges to the open science movement.
ISSN:2164-8034
2166-3033
DOI:10.7560/ic56104