Michael Polanyi

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was a physical chemist turned philosopher who gave us the concept of tacit knowledge: “We know more than we can tell.”

A cyclist can’t explain how they balance. A doctor recognizes a diagnosis before articulating the symptoms. A craftsman’s hands know things their words cannot capture. This knowledge is real, consequential, and resistant to formalization.

Polanyi distinguished focal awareness (what we attend to) from subsidiary awareness (what we attend from). The pianist focuses on the music, not the fingers. Trying to make the subsidiary focal — thinking about your fingers mid-performance — disrupts the skill.

His insight challenges the assumption that knowledge means explicit, transferable information. Much of what experts know lives in their bodies, their perception, their judgment — and dies with them if not passed on through practice.

Related: [[tacit-knowledge]], [[apprenticeship]], [[craft]], [[chunking]]