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+====== Emergence and Tacit Knowing ======
+<markdown>
+There is a tendency among some or among many, depending on who you
+count, to reduce wholes to their parts when explaining the wholes. We
+see this kind of thing when, for example, some scientists or
+philosophers seek to reduce human consciousness to a specific physical
+location in the brain (see
+[scientism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism), more generally).
+This kind of thinking has extraordinary implications, for if all higher
+order things (e.g., people) can be reduced to their lower level, basic
+physical parts (i.e., the wholes are merely summative of the physical
+aspects that comprise them), then all problems at the whole can be
+addressed simply by attending to the parts, especially the tangible,
+mechanistic parts. But is that necessarily true? For example, can all
+mental issues be addressed simply by attending to the physical processes
+or components in the brain, or to borrow an example from
+[Polanyi](http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/864737090), can we fix someone's
+grammar simply by fixing that person's vocabulary, since the grammar of
+a language is simply made up of its parts, the words? And then, can we
+attend to someone's style of writing simply by attending to that
+person's grammar, and so on?
+This way at explaining things (and viewing the world -- i.e., defining
+reality or what is real \[the ontological\]) is common across all
+domains of knowledge and areas of practice. Another example: several
+years ago I was doing historical work at an institutional archives and
+reading some annual library reports from around the mid-20th century.
+One of the common problems that the head librarian described in those
+reports concerned his administration's view of the library as nothing
+more than a warehouse of books. As he described it, the administration
+at his academic institution ignored (or even failed to see) the
+complexities attached to managing and using a library, and as a result,
+repeatedly failed to invest in the library and the librarians who
+operated it (the practical implication of a reductionist viewpoint). For
+the head librarian, the library was more than a warehouse of books; in
+the process of acquiring, describing, managing, shelving, circulating,
+using, and so forth, and by virtue of the material (books, serials,
+etc.) that was being attended to in those processes, something *emerged*
+or came into existence that was beyond a basic warehouse. And the thing
+that emerged was as real as any of its constitutive parts (e.g., books
+and shelves), even if it could not be reduced to those parts. Thus, even
+though that administration would agree that the library was a real
+place, it seemed that for them, the librarian might have said, it was
+only real as "cobblestones" are real.
+> And since I regard the significance of a thing as more important than
+> its tangibility, I shall say that minds and problems are more real
+> than cobblestones (p. 33).
+Polanyi's point in his lecture on emergence is simply this: higher order
+things (technically,
+[coherent](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coherence)
+things), cannot be explained by or reduced to their constitutive parts
+("the whole is greater than the sum of its parts") even if those parts
+are necessary for the whole to exist. Similarly, grammar requires a
+vocabulary, but cannot be reduced to a vocabulary. The reverse is true,
+too. A vocabulary cannot dictate a specific grammar, just as a grammar
+cannot dictate, or *determine*, a style of writing:
+> Take two points. (1) Tacit knowing of a coherent entity relies on our
+> awareness of the particulars of the entity for attending to it; and
+> (2) if we switch our attention to the particulars, this function of
+> the particulars is canceled and we lose sight of the entity to which
+> we had attended. The *ontological counterpoint* \[my emphasis\] of
+> this would be (1) that the principles controlling a comprehensive
+> entity would be found to rely for their operations on laws governing
+> the particulars of the entity themselves; and (2) that at the same
+> time the laws governing the particulars in themselves would never
+> account for the organizing principles of a higher entity which they
+> form (p. 34).
+Polanyi, in all of this, is making a case for tacit knowing (the distal)
+as something that cannot simply be explained by or reduced to explicit
+knowledge (the proximate). In the final lecture, he will address some
+scientific consequences of this position -- issues that relate, in some
+respects, to problem-finding.
+</markdown>

C. Sean Burns: Notebook

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