Polanyi (1966)

Citation: Polanyi, M. (1966). The Tacit Dimension. Doubleday.

Michael Polanyi’s The Tacit Dimension is a classic exploration of tacit knowledge—the idea that we know more than we can explicitly articulate. Polanyi argues that much human knowledge is embodied, skill‑based, and context‑dependent, and therefore cannot be fully reduced to rules or explicit statements.

His most famous line, “We know more than we can tell,” captures the core thesis. Examples include riding a bicycle, recognizing a face, or diagnosing a complex situation. In each case, a person can perform a task or make a judgment without being able to fully describe the steps involved.

Polanyi distinguishes between focal awareness and subsidiary awareness. When performing a task, we focus on the goal (the focal object) while relying on a vast background of subsidiary knowledge that is not explicitly in view. This structure explains why tacit knowledge is hard to codify: it operates beneath conscious articulation.

A key implication is that knowledge is not simply “information.” It is embodied in skills, habits, and contextual understanding. Written instructions can help, but they cannot substitute for embodied practice. This insight challenges the notion that all valuable knowledge can be captured in documents or systems.

Polanyi also emphasizes that tacit knowledge is often personal and rooted in experience. It is acquired through apprenticeship, observation, and practice rather than through formal instruction. This is why expertise is hard to transfer quickly and why organizations rely on mentorship and socialization to pass on skill.

In organizational contexts, Polanyi’s work suggests that documentation is necessary but insufficient. The most valuable knowledge in many fields—judgment, intuition, pattern recognition—is tacit. It cannot be fully written down, and attempts to codify it often produce only partial representations.

Polanyi’s perspective also implies that knowledge transfer requires shared context. A statement or rule that seems clear to one expert may be ambiguous to another because the tacit background differs. Effective transfer often requires immersion in the same practices and environments.

The book’s influence extends far beyond philosophy into management, economics, and organizational theory. It underpins later work on knowledge management (e.g., Nonaka), expertise, and organizational learning. It provides a conceptual justification for why knowledge is sticky and why organizations struggle to preserve and transmit expertise.

A large portion of human knowledge is tacit—rooted in practice and context rather than explicit rules. This makes it difficult to capture and transfer, but also explains why expertise is powerful and rare. Codification has limits. Any system that relies on human judgment must ultimately rely on experience.