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+====== Tacit Knowing and the Challenge to Science ======
+<markdown>
+There are a number of ways to read
+[Polanyi](http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/0226672980). For example, there
+are some historical and political angles to *The Tacit Dimension* that
+relate to the pursuit of science and knowledge and to restrictions on
+freedom by the state or by other entities to pursue those activities.
+Polanyi also worked during a period of the 20th century that saw great
+upheaval, massive wars, and a rise in totalitarianism that in some ways
+mirrors the kind of nationalism and demagoguery that is showing its face
+today across the world. It would be interesting to explore these aspects
+of Polanyi's work, and especially reasons for some of the influence
+Polanyi's ideas have had on some neoliberal thinkers, but for now, let's
+simply bracket out those aspects and focus on what the knowledge
+management (KM) literature has taken off with---the idea that "we can
+know more than what we can tell."
+Each of us will have our own interests in where KM intersects with our
+areas of pursuit. For me, it is hard to escape how *tacit knowing*
+impacts the pursuit of science and, inclusive of that, scholarly
+communication and the conduct of scientific discourse. And this is
+because, unlike some [skeptics](http://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23970) in the
+scholarly communication literature, I hold the view that science is only
+as successful as the scholarly publishing system. That is, our primary
+way to communicate scientific knowledge is through the written text, the
+documentation, and if our system for disseminating that documentation is
+unhealthy, then our pursuit of science, globally and writ-large,
+suffers.
+With this in mind, we can relate the implications attached to *tacit
+knowing* to some modern developments. There is an increasing number of
+researchers, scientists, and librarians who actively pursue a thing
+called [open science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science). Some
+of the arguments put forth in favor of a process that *opens* science
+includes claims that an open science results in a more [efficient and
+productive system](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1149) that takes
+advantage of web and internet technologies, is able to operate with
+better transparency, is better at re-using other scientists' data, and
+is better at attributing other scientists' work. In some ways, we might
+say that an open science is the full, or nearly full, realization of the
+[inherent norms of scientific
+practice](https://cseanburns.net/wiki/blog/reading-robert-k-merton-normative-structure).
+Within this rhetoric among the proponents of open science lies the idea
+that an open science results in a science that is more scientific. The
+key idea here is that science practiced openly will be more available
+for critique, review, judgment, and so forth and as such, its
+epistemological claims can more easily be
+[falsified](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) or
+[verified](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verification_theory) via,
+usually,
+[reproducibility](http://phys.org/news/2013-09-science-crisis.html) and
+replication tests. Thus, and at the very least, there are ideas inherent
+in the open science movement that imply that science is not science
+unless it is open and it is not true unless it is reproducible, in a
+very mechanical sense. But, these are questionable and *testable*
+claims, which demand a path for moving forward---a path that requires of
+us to test the validity of open science and the premises upon which rest
+our ability to document and codify the processes involved in the conduct
+of scientific pursuits. That is, to say that open science is better
+science requires us to test that claim, scientifically.
+Thus, there are significant epistemological and also
+[commensurability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensurability_%28philosophy_of_science%29)
+issues that are simply not acknowledged by the open science community.
+Pertinent to this is one basic issue: the [criterion of
+demarcation](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/#KarPop).
+That is, what criterion do we use to identify science from what is not
+science (or pseudoscience)? For Polanyi, if "we can know more than we
+can tell" means there are limits to what we can communicate, and open
+science is about being better at communicating scientific work, then
+even under a better model of scholarly and scientific communication
+there will always be an upper bound limit on what can be falsified,
+verified, or reproduced via scientific documentation. This means there
+will never be a complete guarantee that scientific claims can be trusted
+via the scholarly communication system. There is always something
+intrinsic in our scientific knowing that is beyond what we can tell.
+What is also not fully acknowledged are other ideas about the
+demarcation of science---issues related to *problem-solving* (ala
+[Kuhn](http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34548541)) and *problem-finding*
+(ala
+[Merton](https://cseanburns.net/wiki/blog/reading-robert-k-merton-matthew-effect)).
+Here we can refer to, I think, one of the best passages (pp. 64-66) of
+Polanyi's book, the ending of which he writes:
+> Thus the scientific interest---or scientific value---of a contribution
+> is formed by three factors: its *exactitude*, its *systematic
+> importance*, and the *intrinsic interest of its subject matter* (p.
+> 66).
+In other words, Polanyi argues that science is demarcated not just by
+its truthfulness, its coherence, but also by whether it is *interesting*
+in the right *theoretical* way. This brings us back to
+[Merton's](http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/817893417) statement about the
+transmission of not just scientific knowing to the next generation of
+scientists, but also of scientific *taste*. Let me re-quote Merton:
+> The role of outstanding scientists in influencing younger associates
+> is repeatedly emphasized in the interviews with \[Nobel\] laureates.
+> Almost invariably they lay great emphasis on the importance of
+> problem-finding, not only problem-solving. They uniformly express the
+> strong conviction that what matters most in their work is a developing
+> sense of taste, of judgment, in seizing upon problems that are of
+> fundamental importance (p. 453).
+I am not a skeptic about scientific documentation, but *tacit knowing*
+raises very interesting and serious challenges about the conduct and
+dissemination of science, and as well as any kind of knowledge that must
+be taught and passed from one generation to the next, from teacher to
+student, or from co-worker to co-worker. This is the task that Polanyi
+has placed before us.
+</markdown>

C. Sean Burns: Notebook

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