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+ | ====== Emergence and Tacit Knowing ====== | ||
+ | |||
+ | < | ||
+ | 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:// | ||
+ | This kind of thinking has extraordinary implications, | ||
+ | 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:// | ||
+ | grammar simply by fixing that person' | ||
+ | a language is simply made up of its parts, the words? And then, can we | ||
+ | attend to someone' | ||
+ | person' | ||
+ | |||
+ | 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' | ||
+ | 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 " | ||
+ | |||
+ | > And since I regard the significance of a thing as more important than | ||
+ | > its tangibility, | ||
+ | > than cobblestones (p. 33). | ||
+ | |||
+ | Polanyi' | ||
+ | things (technically, | ||
+ | [coherent](https:// | ||
+ | things), cannot be explained by or reduced to their constitutive parts | ||
+ | ("the whole is greater than the sum of its 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*, | ||
+ | |||
+ | > 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, | ||
+ | > 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. | ||
+ | </ | ||