We know more than we can tell; tacit knowledge cannot be fully articulated.
Polanyi's 1966 formulation: we know how to ride a bicycle or recognise a face without being able to state the rules. It was the standing limit on rule-based automation until statistical learning bypassed it.
In practice
- A radiographer who spots the anomaly cannot say what drew their eye, which is why the training is apprenticeship rather than a checklist.
- A chef's "until it looks right" is not evasion; the knowledge exists and does not survive being written down.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Science & Epistemology
- Essay
- Paradoxes in the data, and sayings about knowing