Tacit Dimension Research Articles

Discovering clinical phronesis

Phronesis is often described as a ‘practical wisdom’ adapted to the matters of everyday human life. Phronesis enables one to judge what is at stake in a situation and what means are required to bring about a good outcome. In medicine, phronesis tends to be called upon to deal with ethical issues and to offer a critique of clinical practice as a straightforward instrumental application of scientific knowledge. There is, however, a paucity of empirical studies of phronesis, including in medicine. Using a hermeneutic and phenomenological approach, this inquiry explores how phronesis is manifest in the stories of clinical practice of eleven exemplary physicians. The findings highlight five overarching themes: ethos (or character) of the physician, clinical habitus revealed in physician know-how, encountering the patient with attentiveness, modes of reasoning amidst complexity, and embodied perceptions (such as intuitions or gut feeling). The findings open a discussion about the contingent nature of clinical situations, a hermeneutic mode of clinical thinking, tacit dimensions of being and doing in clinical practice, the centrality of caring relations with patients, and the elusive quality of some aspects of practice. This study deepens understandings of the nature of phronesis within clinical settings and proposes ‘Clinical phronesis’ as a descriptor for its appearance and role in the daily practice of (exemplary) physicians.

Book Review "The Tacit Dimension" by Michael Polayni

The book The Tacit Dimension by the author Michael Polanyi speaks about the different dimensions of Knowledge of the world in a philosophical context. The author deals with the many facets of Knowledge, knowing its emergence and how society explored it in the three chapters. He tried to enumerate the above things. The book is for insightful reading to an ordinary man who understands how Knowledge works and how different associations of Knowledge are in our society with academic, societal, intellectual, and personal endeavors. The book shifts the reader's attention from intimate Knowledge to a philosophical knowledge perspective. The author finds Knowledge is of different dimensions where it is subjected to every individual's upbringing, perception, sensations, and the way s/he interacts with intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Various paradoxes we frequently encounter in the world are subjected to how things exist, how things appear, and how we perceive them with our information

On heartbreak, livelihoods and art: affect and crip desire in art making assemblages

ABSTRACT This article explores the affective dimensions of disabled, D/deaf, mad, and neurodiverse artists’ work through a livelihoods framework informed by the social and tacit dimensions of heartbreak. Heartbreak emerged during interviews with twenty artists in Canada in 2020, during a time of significant state-based policy changes that impacted disabled people’s livelihoods in the province of Ontario. Taken together, the artists’ stories form a rhizomatic cartography that takes crip wisdom and desire as significant elements of artmaking amid wider relational assemblages of affect. Drawing on Deleuzian and Guattarian concepts of desire and Puar’s difference-in/as-assemblage, researchers assert that although crip artmaking is not without joy, heartbreak is embedded in the politically aesthetic work of cultural production.

What Makes a Joke Bad: Enthymemes and the Pragmatics of Humor

Abstract Bad jokes are not simply non-humorous texts. They are texts that are humorous for someone––their author at least––but not for their audience. Bad jokes thus involve a contextual––pragmatic––dimension that is neglected in the semantic theories of humor. In this paper, we propose an approach to humor based on the Aristotelian notion of surprising enthymemes. Jokes are analyzed as kinds of arguments, whose tacit dimension can be retrieved and justified by considering the “logic” on which it is based. However, jokes are based on specific pragmatic conditions: they are regarded as arguments grounded on a generalization that is at the same time uncommon, retrievable, and acceptable or plausible for the audience. This perspective integrates the “local logic” of jokes within a broader rhetorical theory that ultimately rests on the communicative notion of common ground.

How efficiently are we using our understanding of the tacit dimension of teaching?

AbstractThis paper considers the tacit dimension of teaching. Policy and research focused on teaching have addressed the explicit application of knowledge within the field. This paper views knowledge from the positions of explicit knowledge, and implicit or tacit knowledge. Although widely acknowledged as a contributing constituent of teachers' practice, there has been limited research on tacit knowledge in teaching. The nature of teachers' work generates evidence from observable behaviour and action, and has contributed significantly to contemporary research on practice. Where there is a gap in similar expanse of research is on the understanding of the non‐observables and implicit or tacit knowledge which informs practice. This area of tacit knowledge in teaching remains minimally understood and under‐researched. The research presented in this paper identifies underlying cognitive processes which inform practice in teaching. For the first time in research on teaching, these cognitive processes have been amalgamated to capture what happens beyond that which is observable. A call for unison on the dynamics of implicit and explicit knowledge in teaching is urgent to unearth complexity and externalise professional development stages. The findings from this paper will be beneficial to teachers, teacher educators and policymakers. Context and implicationsRationale for this studyThere is a strong body of work on the observable elements of teaching and how observed behaviour contributes to an improved understanding of practice. There is limited insight of the tacit composition of teaching.Why the new findings matterResearch into teaching acknowledges the place of tacit knowledge which underpins teacher action. This paper contributes to the field in the identification of cognitive processes which interact and subsequently activate observable teacher action or behaviour. Teacher thinking, evidenced in cognitive processes precedes teacher action and behaviour. Decision making in teaching is foundational, and the interplay of seven cognitive processes which this paper explores, advances understanding of the tacit composition of teaching.Implications for practiceThis paper impacts on the field of teaching in its ability to externalise the cognitive processes which shape practice. Whilst there is significant provision for the explicit knowledge of practice, there is limited understanding of the implicit constituents of teaching. From this paper, teachers are equipped with the understanding needed to develop the tacit elements of their practice. Another implication is on teacher education in the delivery of an enhanced and holistic preparation of new entrants to the profession. For policymakers, relevant policies which support teachers' development could be informed by knowledge of the tacit composition of teaching.

Tracing (in)visibilising practices: engaging with simulations for architecture and spatial planning

ABSTRACT Using ethnographic vignettes from the development of simulations for architectural design and spatial planning in university contexts, this article discusses how the material, embodied, and tacit dimensions of developing and doing research with simulations can be opened up to analysis. We ask how (in)visibility comes to matter in simulations and how it is made and unmade in different situations. In particular, we explore how specific enactments of the things that are simulated and the practices involved in producing and handling them are rendered (in)visible through the simulation process. We argue that focusing on the politics of (in)visibility in making simulations can render power relations underpinning architectural and spatial planning practices more apparent.

Mobile researchers, immobile data: Managing data (producers).

Scientific institutions have increasingly embraced formalized research data management strategies, which involve complex social practices of codifying the tacit dimensions of data practices. Several guidelines to facilitate these practices have been introduced in recent years, for example, the FAIR guiding principles. The aim of these practices is to foster transparency and reproducibility through 'data sharing,' the public release of data for unbounded reuse. However, a closer look suggests that many scientists' practices of data release might be better described as what I call data handovers. These practices are not rooted in the lofty ideals of good scientific practice and global data reuse but in the more mundane necessities of research continuity, which have become more urgent in light of increasing academic mobility. The Austrian scientists interviewed for this study reinterpreted defining features of research data management - such as ensuring findability - as techniques for managing the effects of researcher mobility. This suggests that the adoption of Open Science practices might be dissociated from its stated epistemic goals, and explains why many Open Science initiatives at present are administratively strong but normatively weak.

Embedding Experiential Design Knowledge in Interactive Knowledge Graphs

AbstractKnowledge collection, extraction, and organization are critical activities in all aspects of the engineering design process. However, it remains challenging to surface and organize design knowledge, which often contains implicit or tacit dimensions that are difficult to capture in a scalable and accessible manner. Knowledge graphs (KGs) have been explored to address this issue, but have been primarily semantic in nature in engineering design contexts, typically focusing on sharing explicit knowledge. Our work seeks to understand knowledge organization during an experiential activity and how it can be transformed into a scalable representation. To explore this, we examine 23 professional designers’ knowledge organization practices as they virtually engage with data collected during a teardown of a consumer product. Using this data, we develop a searchable knowledge graph as a mechanism for representing the experiential knowledge and afford its use in complex queries. We demonstrate the knowledge graph with two extended examples to reveal insights and patterns from design knowledge. These findings provide insight into professional designers’ knowledge organization practices and represent a preliminary step toward design knowledge bases that more accurately reflect designer behavior, ultimately enabling more effective data-driven support tools for design.

Phenomenology and the Digital World: Problems and Perspectives

The last years’ achievements in neuroscience are key for a philosophical analysis focused on the mind-body problem, such as the phenomenological approach.The digital evolution, on the one hand, faces us with the interaction between the world of reality and the world of possibility. This means more than a mere coexistence between these two dimensions. Rather, a concrete feedback occurs among them, and this brings out unprecedented and unavoidable issues with regard to perceptual processes. On the other hand, the digital evolution allows for analyzing data and monitoring environmental systems, thus reasoning in a predictive way, anticipating problems, and checking ex ante their evolution and outcomes.Neuroscience, for its part, with the experiments of Libet and their subsequent interpretations, has highlighted a consciousness of the unconscious made of ballistic and automatic processes, which constitutes the starting phase of our decisions and actions. This further confirmed that sequential and linear thinking is unable to address the brain-environment relationship that is key in understanding any cognitive process.This analysis confirms the relevance of different aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology. There is, however, a “but,” which significantly reduces the extent of adherence to his point of view. Husserl assumed that an implicit horizon precedes or accompanies the acts of conscience. This is the material, impressional, passive, receptive, and, in some way, tacit dimension, strictly connected to the issue of genesis, i.e. the process of constitution of the analyzed entities. Thus, he drew a clear dividing line between this dimension and the phases of the self-controlling, vigilant conscience and its activity. In fact, his approach to the phenomenological problem is mainly oriented toward these phases.

A Story with Characters and Action

A Story with Characters and Action

The Tacit Dimension of Touch: Tactile Recognition, Tangibility and Self-touch in Kurt Goldstein’s Studies on Agnosia

In his experimental studies on tactile recognition, the German neurologist Kurt Goldstein observes a peculiar ‘twitching movement’ of the body in neurologically impaired patients suffering from mind-blindness. Drawing on Goldstein’s interpretation of these bodily movements as kinaesthetic reactions, the present article advances a symmetrical conception of tactility that relocates the bipolarity of the sense of touch within the human body. In line with this symmetrical approach, the kinaesthetic reactions will be construed as tactile self-activation or self-touch of the body and conceptualized, following Michael Polanyi’s epistemological notion, as the ‘tacit dimension of touch’. Combining neuropathological aspects with a media theoretical and epistemological trajectory, this article aims at re-evaluating the centrality of the registers of the sense of touch as the fundamental ground for grasping the world in its concrete encounters as well as in its symbolic abstractions.

Preventing food waste in the Chinese catering supply chain：from a tacit knowledge viewpoint

PurposeIn China food waste during the catering service process namely the back end of the entire food supply chain has neither received sufficient attention nor been evaluated precisely even though it has been the cause of food security concerns. In response considering the complex tacit knowledge embedded at the front end of the Chinese catering supply chain this article aimed at addressing relevant issues from the viewpoint of tacit knowledge.Design/Methodology/ApproachThis article is conceptual in nature. From the perspective of knowledge management (KM), we used a deductive method to explore intricate tacit knowledge embedded at the front end of the catering supply chain in China.FindingsThe key challenges in preventing food waste in the Chinese catering supply chains are: (1) a variety of knowledge icebergs in Chinese catering culture, (2) the complex tacit dimension of knowledge in Chinese cookery, and (3) difficulties in bringing standardization to the Chinese catering business. The three KM-based step-by-step solutions are: (1) standardizing the essential cookery techniques of Chinese cuisine, (2) encouraging catering enterprises to create online knowledge-sharing platforms to reduce food waste for all stakeholders, and (3) using big data to build a nationwide KM system.Practical ImplicationsOur research indicates that the of a comprehensive KM system specific to the Chinese catering supply chain is crucial for standardizing the essential cookery techniques of Chinese cuisine and analyzing big data, which could help improve Chinese catering processes and gastronomic habits in reality, so as to more effectively prevent food waste.Originality/ValueOur research contributes to the literature by connecting the reduction of food waste issues with the KM perspective. A key to more efficiently reducing food waste in China lies in the lack of a deeper, more systematic understanding of the tacit dimension of knowledge in Chinese cookery and impressive dietary culture, namely the front end of the catering supply chain.

E-Agricultural Systems Adoption and Transfer amongst Rural Communities: Expanding the Tacit Dimension

This paper proposes findings to validate a new systems framework of e- Agriculture adoption and innovation that will open new avenues of research for control and automation systems theory and practice informing policy in respect of e-readiness of rural communities. It presents one dimension of the new model that of expanding the tacit dimension as to enlighten and deepen systems designers to utilise social networks that exist with all communities as too aid design and development of new technologies that combines with the working lives and add values to the working lives of individuals.

The Personal as Postcritical and Theopoetic

Exploring Polanyi on religion in Personal Knowledge and Meaning as mystical, metaphoric, and mythic as well as ritual and belief, I seek to clarify the meaning of the personal through a lens combining postcritical and theopoetic perspectives. Stanley Hopper’s theopoetic similarly criticizes, and seeks unconscious depths beneath, modern dualism, deepening Polanyi’s discussion of the religious efficacy of figural language. The personal for Polanyi embraces tacit commitment, from-to emergence, communal connectedness, creativity shaping our world, integrating self and world through figural language, process of discovery, and affirmation of God as presence and integrative agency in our existence and understanding. Poteat deepens the personal with effects of first-person-singular grammar. While affirming via negativa, letting go of frameworks, Polanyi insists traditional frameworks are essential to religion. He criticizes modern poetry for shattering Christian frameworks. Not recognizing religion in its fragments, he misses an unrealized potential for understanding religion as the depths of the tacit dimension. Letting go all frameworks, thoughts, rules, and goals in the via negativa, we dwell in mystery within which God presences through evocation of poetic images, and we experience our personhood as elusive selves enveloped in and impelled by divine Mystery.

Designing felt experiences with movement-based, wearable musical instruments: From inclusive practices toward participatory design.

Inclusive musical instruments benefit from incorporating wearable interfaces into digital musical instrument design, creating opportunities for bodily felt experiences and movement-based interactions. In this article, we discuss the evolution of our inclusive design approach behind the design and performance practices of three wearable musical instruments. By focusing on the embodied, somatic, and tacit dimensions of movement-based musical interaction, we evaluate these case studies, combining the third and first-person perspectives. The design and implementation of the wearable sensing, utilizing the additive manufacturing techniques, are discussed for each instrument and its performer in specific cases of musical expression. This article further discusses how our approach integrates music performance as a crucial step into design and evaluation, utilizing these performance practices and such collaborative settings for improved diversity and inclusion. Finally, we examine how our design approach evolves from user-centered design to more participatory practices, offering people with diverse abilities a shared music performance space.

The Great Death and the Pure Land: Nishitani Keiji and the Ecological Emergency

This essay argues for the importance of Nishitani Keiji’s thought as a critical resource to confront what the unfolding ecological crisis reveals about who and what we are. The first part considers the importance of “nature” for Nishitani that accords with insights that both resonate with his Zen practice and heritage, and which open up tacit dimensions of the Jōdo Shin (True Pure Land) tradition. The second section turns to Nishitani’s highly original Zen “existentialization” of science in general, and by extension, contemporary climate science in particular, in order to highlight Nishitani’s Great Death as a response to the unfolding ecological catastrophe. In treating climate science as a kōan, we not only come to see who we are, but also come undone and awaken to a new relation to the Great Earth.

The regime of truth of knowledge management: the role of information systems in the production of tacit knowledge

ABSTRACT This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the tacit dimension of knowledge management (KM), focusing on the role of Information Systems (IS) in the production of tacit knowledge within knowledge-based firms. It argues that the crucial function of tacit knowledge in the creation of organisational knowledge comes from the way IS favour the adoption of shared mental models in order to create a culture dedicated to the intentions and goals of the organisation. Yet these intentions and goals determine the managerial framework for the creation, appropriation, storage, and eventual valorisation of the explicit knowledge assets of the firm. Thus, the paper aims to bridge the gap between the two main approaches to KM, which is based on the separation between tacit and explicit knowledge, according to which technologies help exclusively with managing the production of explicit knowledge. It thus draws the paths by which IS contribute to the creation of the tacit organisational background from which new organisational knowledge is elicited in accordance with the managers’ objectives.

The tacit dimension of expertise: Professional vision at work in airport security

Whereas “professional vision” has been mostly analyzed in apprenticeship and other settings where knowledge is made explicit or reflected upon, I focus on how expertise tacitly plays out in task-oriented interaction among practitioners. The paper considers orientation both to the coworker’s (recipient design) and one’s own (expressive order) expertise in the collaborative accomplishment of airport security work. I show how screeners recruit action from colleagues in largely underspecified ways, based on shared access to the visibility field and expected professional vision. Requesting is tacitly accomplished via “highlighting,” which also accounts for one’s request. Accepting is silently achieved via locomotion, which also serves as a display of understanding. Embodied action is systematically preferred to verbal one. Talk is employed in larger proportions when the domain of scrutiny is not equally accessible to interactants, and when “face-work” is required.

Maturity and level of knowledge management in the company: an application of Nonaka and Takeuchi model and Fuzzy Logic

Abstract: This paper aims to understand how the interconnection between the tacit and explicit dimensions of knowledge impacts knowledge management and its degree of maturity. Knowledge management maturity is understood as the ability firms are expected to have in order to exercise (to some degree) the skills required to manage knowledge internally. Nonaka and Takeuchi (N&T) model of organizational knowledge management was applied to a sample of companies (segmented by size) from the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro, by using the logic of fuzzy sets. The results have shown that small and medium companies have lower levels of knowledge management maturity when compared to large companies. However, in large companies, knowledge management is at medium levels. In this context, this paper suggests, as management guidelines, that companies measure their professionals' perception regarding the company level of knowledge management, pursuing to identify which of their components should be developed.

Michael Polanyi and the epistemology of intelligence analysis

ABSTRACT Epistemology is at the heart of the intelligence analysis profession. Michael Polanyi’s concepts of ‘tacit knowing’ and ‘personal knowledge’ offers a more precise account for understanding the tacit process of skilfully solving problems of epistemic complexity, along with a deeper appreciation for the personal aspect of knowledge. Examining this conceptual framework offers an opportunity for re-cognizing key features of this profession, especially the personal and tacit dimensions involved in analysis. These examinations aim to contribute towards the training and education of analysts, along with offering the individual analyst a detailed language and logic for reflection and self-exploration regarding their practice.