Tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge—as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge—is knowledge that is difficult to express or extract; therefore it is more difficult to transfer to others by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. This can include motor skills, personal wisdom, experience, insight, and intuition. For example, knowing that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge; it can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient. In contrast, the ability to speak a language, ride a bicycle, knead dough, play a musical instrument, or design and use complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge which is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to explicitly transfer to other people. The term tacit knowing is attributed to Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge (1958). In his later work, The Tacit Dimension (1966), Polanyi made the assertion that "we can know more than we can tell." He states not only that there is knowledge that cannot be adequately articulated by verbal means, but also that all knowledge is rooted in tacit knowledge. While this concept made most of its impact on philosophy of science, education and knowledge management—all fields involving humans—it was also, for Polanyi, a means to show humankind's evolutionary continuity with animals. Polanyi describes that many animals are creative, some even have mental representations, but can only possess tacit knowledge. This excludes humans, however, who developed the capability of articulation and therefore can transmit partially explicit knowledge. This relatively modest difference then turns into a big practical advantage, but there is no unexplained evolutionary gap. Tacit knowledge can be defined as skills, ideas and experiences that are possessed by people but are not codified and may not necessarily be easily expressed. With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others.