Between tacit knowing and Pragmatism: linking Polanyi and the Pragmatists

Abstract

This paper will explore a number of intersections between the work of the great philosopher-scientist Michael Polanyi and key themes and issues that lie at the heart of the pragmatist philosophical tradition. Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowledge and his construction of a model of consciousness developed from clues from Gestalt psychology has a remarkable set of parallels with pragmatism’s own concerns on both the methodological and substantive levels. I show, through selective examples, how Polanyi’s work can be fruitfully linked with pivotal notions from Dewey’s, Peirce’s, and James’s reflections. Of especially importance is Polanyi’s exploitation of the analytical notion of a skill which allows him to develop a truly experimental theory of knowing that abolishes the spectator model that has haunted the philosophical tradition and which pragmatism opposed on many levels.