Little Shop of Knowledge

The Way of Discovery by Richard Gelwick

 

This book is an introduction to the philosophical thought of Michael Polanyi, specifically how he develops an argument for the role of tacit knowledge in epistemology.

 

Gelwick begins by giving some context of the story of Michael Polanyi, the people and mostly events that were occurring at the time. He provides in some pages a quick history of past years in Europe in order to give some context for the ideas of Polanyi. He addresses first the positivist paradigm of epistemology and methodology. (Which basically says that through the scientific method you have a “one size fits all” formula to gain knowledge from the real world).Counter arresting such paradigm, Polanyi introduces us to concepts such as Dynamo-coupling, Tacit Dimension, Tacit Knowledge, Focal and Subsidiary awareness, Indwelling, Intuition, etc.

 

Though I had a hard time with all of the concepts it made me realize that even the way in which we perceive our methods for obtaining knowledge are paradigms and that there is a whole conversation addressing the issue. What I value from this is the focal awareness it gave me on the topic, before I pretty much didn’t even think about this matter much.