Commentary on Knowing More Than We Can Tell

Abstract

In The Tacit Dimension, Michael Polanyi declares, “I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell.” (1966, p. 4; italics in original). I am struck by the directness with which he unobtrusively asserts the existence of the arena which Sinclair’s paper addresses and expands upon, with respect to a mathematics education opened far wider than is customary. The fact that Polanyi opts for the word ‘fact’ also puts his claim into the realm of knowledge, though Caleb Gattegno’s expression ‘a fact of my awareness’ might also be one to bear in mind. These oxymoronic or catachretic ripples—although the instance in the title of Polanyi’s (1958) more famous book Personal Knowledge may have provoked a tsunami—can make us aware even today of what is often taken-for-granted with regard to the epistemic.

We must know, we will know. (David Hilbert)