Replying to LO25748 --
Dear Organlearners.
Fred Nickols <nickols@att.net> writes:
>The map ain't the territory. Writing about tacit knowledge
>doesn't necessarily entail making tacit knowledge explicit.
>So far as I can tell, Polanyi could write volumes about tacit
>knowledge and (a) never make explicit a shred of tacit
>knowledge and (b) be quite consistent with his own view of
>tacit knowledge.
Greetings Fred,
It seems as if I am a junkie. I have decided to stop writing for a while
because I cannot even ensure the correct email address to a response of
mine. Yet, what is more important -- taking a rest or getting behind the
chop of the axe? OK, this one exception please. I cannot be tacit on the
tacit despite my decision.
In your "Writing about tacit knowledge..." you use the word "about". This
word has several meanings of which "around in the outside" is the primary
meaning. In this sense "Writing about tacit knowledge..." means writing on
anything outside tacit knowledge, but not on anything within tacit
knowledge.
Perhaps my mind is indeed slipping here, but I perceive an analogy with my
reply to Andrew Campbell on Roger Bacon. There is a vast difference for me
between the writings "about" a person and the writings which came "from
within" that person self. I am often frustrated because writings "about" a
person are readily available, but writings "from within" that person are
as scarce as "chicken teeth". Now, turning back to tacit knowledge, are
writings "from within" tacit knowledge impossible, something which cannot
ever happen? When we think of Roger Bacon, he did write some eight
centuries ago. But he cannot write now because he is not alive anymore --
the essentiality liveness had been impaired too much. Now, turning back to
tacit knowledge again, are writings "from within" tacit knowledge
impossible because some conditions (perhaps even liveness) have not been
met and not in the sense of never ever.
I am not busy with a rhetoric excercise here. Some twenty years ago, after
ten years of teaching, I became deeply under the impression how great a
role, eventhough negatively, tacit knowledge play in the learning of
students. In those days my own name for tacit knowledge (before I got hold
of Polanyi's work) was MEB (Meta Epistemological Base). I will now use
that name rather than "tacit knowledge" for some while in this
contribution. Students were trained so much to memorise and regurgitate
loads of information created by other people that they have unlearned to
express with any medium (like language, music and mathematics) their own
MEB. Thus I often had to teach a failing student oblivious to his/her own
MEB how to recognise that he/she had a MEB and how to make use of that
MEB, often with spectacular results.
I would not have become under the impression how a great role MEB played
in the learning of a student if I not self had previously became aware of
the role which MEB played in my own learning. It took me some two years of
gruesome struggling to pin down in writing some of my own MEB. Consider,
for example, "doing". I was often aware that I do something because I know
how to do it, but when I tried to put in words what I know "from" (rather
than "about") that doing, it took me days and many dozens of pages of
writing, altering and deleting to end up with a few sentences "from" my
MEB with which I was satisfied. I went through pencils, erasers and folio
paper like a fire through a dry forest. Sometimes I could jot down with
diagrams and symbols what I found impossible to say with langauge (my own
mother tongue Afrikaans, English or German). Sometimes I could express my
MEB only with sounds (musical rather than linguistic) or animations in my
mind.
Sometimes I was convinced that my MEB and my intuition (gut felling) were
one and the same thing, but when I studied what others had written "about"
intuition, I wondered whether I self had any either any intuition or MEB
at all. Gradually, while studying the writings of somebody else, I became
aware how that person magnificiently express some of my MEB which I still
was struggling to express satisfactoraly. I became aware that some authors
often expressed my MEB while others seldom, if ever, did so. I began to
search for a common property among these authors or in their writings. I
eventually discovered in a flash that these authors usually wrote "from
within" rather than "about". It was almost as if I could perceive their
own MEB "between the lines" of what they wrote. I began to distinguish
writings into, perhaps derogatively, first hand and second had
information. First hand information compelled me into a trance whereas
second hand information quickly bored me.
I also found out that the most powerful way to connect effectively with my
own MEB was to question it incessantly. Yes, using words in one level of
my mind asking another level (the MEB) which worked without words. Those
periods of time during which I almost could do something absent mindedly
like walking (politically incorrect) or driving (mecanically dangerous)
became most valuable to me because then I could hammer my MEB with
questions. I eventually discovered that I could solve many a formal
problem by preceding it with such a MEB questioning. The best time was
early in morning while driving to the university. I would say to myself
"Horse, you have twenty minutes to question what you know, but could not
formalise in the solution." By the time I arrived at the university, I
knew exactly what to do whereas the previous day and at wakeup the present
day I was still in the dark.
This questioning of my own MEB proved to be very useful in my teaching
too. When a student who failed some test came to me afterwards for
personal counseling, one of the first things I did was to determine the
"being" (status) and "becoming" (functioning) of the student's MEB. I
never used the term MEB. I usually said: "Obviously, your answer to the
test could neither tell you nor me what you know and that is why you are
here. What we now have to do, is to find out together without such a
useless test what do you know. I will ask you questions and you will have
to give me authentic answers. Do not tell me what you think I will want to
hear because I want to hear what you think."
Then my questions begin, many dozens of them. They are of two kinds. Some
questions are "about" the student's MEB with which I specifically try to
get as closely to that MEB as possible. The student usually answers them
clearly without hesistation. When I get the feeling that I have actually
made contact with the MEB itself because the student's answer will
suddenly become vague or even inconsistent, I ask questions of the second
kind which aim for answers "from within" the MEB itself. The student's
responses, even with body language, suddenly manifest that his/her mind is
now operating at the edge of chaos. All sorts of deeply felt responses can
be expected. I then stress that such passionate emotions (angering,
crying, fearing, resenting, swearing) upset me not in the least because I
know also how it is to have them. Often I will reveal my own passionate
emotions at such a time. They usually surprise the student, yet help the
student to reach beyond his/her emotions rather than flaring the student's
emotions higher.
Sometimes within this mental chaos the student will suddenly exclaim "Now
I know what went wrong in the test!" I will then ask the student: "Tell me
what went wrong". The student will then tell what went wrong, eventhough
inelegant and brokenly. It is then when I have to show through questioning
once again that the student knew all along what went wrong, but was not
able to tell what went wrong. I usually refer to answers which the student
has given earlier that he/she was not oblivious to what was wrong. I then
show in terms of the actual answer to the test that this newly emerged
"informing of the knowing" rather than the "intuitive knowing" was absent
when answering the test. Knowing something is one thing, but creating
information on that knowledge so that somebody else (like me) can know
what the student also know is another thing.
Otherwise the mental chaos will exhaust the student to the point of
becoming a zombie. I will then usually tell the student: "You are too
tired to think, what to speak of ordering your thoughts. Let us fix a time
for coming together tomorrow and not a day later, come hell or high
water." In the far majority of cases the student will honour that second
meeting. In many of them, the student will come into my office, radiant
and happy, exclaiming "Now I know what went wrong in the test!". Then
follows that next phase of making sure that student is aware that the new
knowing is in the informing rather than in the not knowing at all. Often
the second session by large is needed to bring the student to that
exclamation "Now I know what went wrong in the test!"
I became intensely aware that not only the inability in inform what the
student knows, but also the free energy available to inform plays a vital
role. Sometimes even the second session will bring exhaustion once again.
By that time I am acutely aware which one or more of the seven
essentialities are so seriously impaired that an emerge into formal
knowledge (knowledge which has led to the creation of information whatever
medium has been used) is impossible. Thus I begin helping that student
through several sessions improving the impaired essentiality. It is here
that I have to keep continually vigilance on the mental free energy of the
student, helping the student to refuel it as often as possible. A
seriously impaired essentiality is a horrendous dissipator of free energy.
Sometimes I am left with no alternative than to conclude that the student
has nothing in his/her MEB which could sustain an answer to the test. In
other words, the student lacks the experience from which that lacking
facet in the MEB could have emerged. A minority of students "take chances
with their creativity". They are well experienced in many things, have a
massive MEB from which they usually draw and succeed in creating the
information required. But chemistry is a horse of another colour because
of its intrinsic irreversibility. If they lack chemical experiences, their
MEB lacks in chemistry and hence all their creativity will not enable them
to create an answer to the test. These students are usually very shocked
and indignified because of having failed the test.
But the majority of students lacking in MEB "challenge life with rote
learning". My heart goes out to them while also wanting to eradicate by
cruel means a system which made them what they are. They spend every
available minute awake to memorise information as well as even memorising
its application. Since they are 100% efficient rote learners, spending all
their time with their eyes on the books, they have very little experience
in life and even less emergences upon it. Their MEB is meagre as a whole
and they seem to have never learned how to draw from the little MEB which
they have. Their creativity is stunted to a point which makes me crying.
They usually beg me to train them how to pass my tests. Consequently I
have to prepare them with compassion and sensitivity for perhaps the most
shocking response they will ever get: "I will not train you so that you
can respond with rote learning because this brought you to where you now
are. However, I will be your midwife to help you as much as I can with
your own authentic learning. We have a long path ahead of us. Eventhough I
want to help you, it is most important that you will want passionately to
change your learning entirely."
My admiration for these students is immense. They soon realise that they
will spend at least another additional year at university just to make up
for what they never even had to lose. But usually they take to authentic
learning with the same tenacity which they have enslaved themselves to
rote learning. They often have an intense desire to serve people in some
or other definite manner, the very reason for commiting themselves to this
rote learning. They will visit me for several months, seeking consultation
on sometimes the wierdest of things.
Then they usually disappear from the scene and I will usually become very
distressed about it. How many times have I not said to myself: "At de
lange, kick yourself in the arse. You have pushed them into a river too
strong to stay head above water. You have ushered them into a desert too
dry to find any water." But almost invaraibly, sometimes even after a
couple of years, they will come back to me, telling me excitedly how much
bliss they have derived from creating their own knowledge self. Truely, a
desert has come into flower. Often I will make some time to question them
on what they know, but not yet have used to create any kind of
information. They will usually respond with "Derived from those
experiences I know this and that which I could not yet find in any book.".
Their now massive MEB has clearly served well the emergence of their
formal knowledge.
So what is this MEB. Is it implicit knowledge? Is it intuition? Is it
tacit knowledge? Shall I call it "mute knowledge" to preserve Polanyi's
concept of tacit knowledge and thus distinguish this MEB by a different
name? Perhaps the name "mute knowledge" describe the best what I tried to
tell above. Silence can be overcome. A person is mute (silent) because of
either not hearing at all, refusing to speak for some important reason or
unable to speak because of mutilation to the voice organs. Whatever the
case, being mute is a tragedy to human nature. This tragedy has to be
transformed into a victory. The alternative is ghastly -- those who assist
the undertaker are called mutes too. But they do not speak so as to homour
the dead who cannot speak any more. Rote learning makes us mutes working
for the undertaker, honouring dead writers who cannot speak anymore.
Why do we want to insist that "tacit knowledge is that knowledge which
can't be spoken"? Is it to preserve Polanyi's definition? If it is, do we
not then cut out with this definition the very tongue with which we can
speak "from" tacit knowledge. Is it because "tacit knowledge" is isolated
from any mental process by which to create external information and thus
signify its emergence internally to formal knowledge? If it is, does this
very isolation not result into a stable equilibrium from which no
significant changes is ever possible again? Isolate any system and for all
practical purposes it becomes like the "empty set" of mathematics --
outwardly serving a purpose, but inwardly dead forever.
In my own mother tongue Afrikaans I eventually suceeded in calling this
MEB by "stomkennis" and formal knowledge by "vormkennis". One
Afrikaans-English dictionary translates this "stom" into
* mute, speachless; dull, dumb, foollish, stupid; poor, wretched, pitiable.
but not decidedly not into
* tacit
So let my "stomkennis" (mute knowledge) then be all these other things in
addition to mute should this mute take presedence.
The same dictionary translates "tacit" into Afrikaans words which mean
"speachless", "silent" and "self-evident". I cannot conform any more to a
tacit stance on "mute knowledge" because learning itself is at stake. If I
indeed have to be "speachless" and "silent" on the inside of "tacit
knowledge" because it is "self-evident" and allow myself only speaking
"about" it, then I would be honoured to be called "dull, dumb, foollish,
stupid; poor, wretched and pitiable" to work with "mute knowledge".
What is the relationship of "tacit knowledge" to "mute knowledge"? I have
described the latter in this reponse by calling it MEB, sometimes "from
within" because I did not so before, but usually "about" because I did it
previously so that it is now "formal knowledge" for me closely linked to
my "mute knowledge". One thing which I stress about this "mute knowledge"
is that a person is not deaf forever to it. When another person speaks of
it (so that is not mute for that other person) and this person reckognises
his own knowing in this information (speach), then it may very well be
"mute knowledge" to this person. This will be exactly the case when this
person is self "mute" on what he/she recognises as own knowledge. Another
person can tell it, but this person cannot yet tell it.
Perhaps my mind have indeed slipped with this contribution, but now I will
take a rest with great relief and happiness for having said what I had to
say. I will still study the contributions of fellow learners to the
LO-dialogue daily because it means so much to me fathoming my own "mute
knowledge". Perhaps I have expressed some of their "tacit knowledge" or
their "mute knowledge". I cannot tell, only they can tell. I would love to
study what they will tell and even try to learn from what they do not
tell.
Now, with care and best wishes, I become tacitly your fellow learner
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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