Dear Organlearners,
Chris Winter <cwin@ozemail.com.au> writes in LO15522:
> Am very interested in this topic and would appreciate further comment,
> directions. Also the measurement of learning in corporations, particularly
> those dealing largely in knowledge, where the intellectual capital is
> being recognised as a large proportion of company value (cf Skandia).
I am also very interested in the topic of "tacit knowledge". Whether it is
possible to measure it, is another question which I will answer later on.
Nevertheless, this concept ought to be intrigueing for anyone concerned
with learning organisations. Knowledge is the outcome of the process
called learning. If a person's knowledge has a "tacit dimension" to it,
then what sort of learning gives rise to this "tacit dimension"? But let
us first answer the following question.
What is "tacit knowledge"? Michael Polanyi defined the "tacit dimension"
of knowledge in 1967 as that knowledge which a person possess, but which
was not yet articulated in words by that person. In other words, Polanyi
was thinking of knowledge which has not yet emerged to the philological
(language) level of conciousness.
Note the two words "emerged" and "philological". The word "philological"
suggest the following question. Are there any other levels of
consciousness to which our tacit knowledge can also emerge? The answer is
definitely yes. Consider, for example, the musical level. We can know
things which we can express in music much easier than in words. We can
provoke a war, incite anarchy, stir enquiry or persuade romance with
music. Other examples are the technological and spiritual levels.
When I think of all these examples, I find that the word "tacit" does not
articulate exactly what I know "tacitly". "Tacit" and "articulate" have
something to do with sound/speach. Thus they apply to emergences into the
philological and musical levels, but not to to emergences into the
technological or spiritual levels. The words "manifest" or "express"
articulate better this emergence from the "tacit" dimension to higher
order dimensions than the word "articulate" itself. The words "principal"
or "primordial" articulate better this dimension from which the higher
order emergences take place. Lastly, even the word "dimension" does not
articulate precisely what the word "faculty" articulate.
The paragraph above exemplify how I try to manifest (articulate) my
principal (tacit) faculty (dimension) of knowledge by an immergence into
the English language. (Please note that English is not my mother tongue
and that I seldom speak it.)
Let me give you another example of how somebody has manifested his
principal faculty of knowledge into a higher faculty of knowledge. A few
days ago I have contributed on the topic "Happiness at Work". I have
written that a number of manifolds are adjointed to emergences in which
humans are involved. I have mentioned three of them: happiness, fondness
and pryness. Now let us consider Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. For me it is
one of the most profound studies IN MUSIC on chaos, bifurcations,
immergences, emergences, order and complexity. When the idea emerged
within Beethoven that the symphony is not complete (a holon) unless it
contains the human voice as a musical instrument, he experienced sheer
bliss in the manifold of happiness. He was so acutely aware of this
manifold that when he had to select a topic for the human voice, he
selected among tens of thousands of topics specifically the topic
happiness ("ode to joy").
How do we "learn" this principal faculty of knowledge? I am tempted not to
answer this question because I wish you to experience yourself the
emergence of that answer, as well as the happiness, fondness and pryness
which are adjointed to this emergence. I thus hope that by saying as
little as possible, your emergent experience will be as authetical as mine
- creative interaction with reality. This answer gives us also an
important insight to what conciousness is.
Now to your question: Can we measure tacit knowledge? I am not sure. How
can I measure anything which has not yet manifested itself in some or
other form?
I think it is much more important for a person to be able to manifest
emergently his/her principal faculty of knowledge into higher order
faculties. The more I work with students and their learning problems, the
more I discover how many of them have serious problems in this very
process. Most of them have a sufficient principal faculty of knowledge.
But their problem is actually how to emerge into the higher faculties of
knowledge. In other words, their ability to learn emergently is almost
nil.
And the present fashion in chaos theory will be of little help to them.
Through the the one corner of the mouth it is said that emergences are
unpredictable. But through the other corner it is said that emergences
take place to join their strange attractors. The inconsistencies and sheer
contradactions is enough to drive one crazy.
We can know much about emergences. But this knowledge will have to develop
emergently itself which makes it an extremely hard problem to solve. For
example, Husserl realised it intuitively and developed phenomenology to
know more about living phenomena. The key to phenomenology is how to
uncover the essentials of a phenomenon. Now, there are definitely
patterns essential to all emergences. One of the patterns has to do with
what we call holism. Thus, if we wish to study emergences and the study
itself is not completely holistic, the study will be doomed to failure.
Knowledge about emergences will not emerge.
I have mentioned the role of holism for a very definite reason. Let us get
back to the emergent manifestation of our principal (tacit) faculty
(dimension) of knowledge into its higher order faculties. How much of this
emergence is possible of we throw holism out of the window? How much can
any learning organisation tap its principal source of knowledge if cares
nothing about holism?
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>