Michael Polanyi
Physical Chemist & Philosopher of Tacit Knowledge
關於
Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath who made major contributions to physical chemistry before turning, in his fifties, to philosophy. Holding a chair in social science at the University of Manchester from 1948, he developed the concept of tacit knowledge, crystallized in his phrase 'we can know more than we can tell.' Against the positivist ideal of fully explicit, impersonal knowledge, he argued that all knowing rests on personal judgment, skill, and 'indwelling' — a background of commitments that can never be completely stated as rules. His books Personal Knowledge (1958) and The Tacit Dimension (1966) remain central to any discussion of knowledge that resists formalization, and pose a sharp question for machines trained only on what has been written down.
主要貢獻
- Introduced the concept of tacit knowledge — 'we can know more than we can tell'
- Wrote Personal Knowledge (1958), a sustained case against the ideal of wholly impersonal, explicit knowledge
- Wrote The Tacit Dimension (1966), the compact statement of his epistemology
- Argued that skilled expertise depends on 'indwelling' — a background that cannot be reduced to rules
- Made foundational contributions to physical chemistry (reaction rates, adsorption, X-ray analysis) before his philosophical work
