198. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT? — C

Most of us probably ask and also hear that question often. There is something human about wanting to know, to have knowledge. In fact, there is a branch of philosophy called epistemology that focuses on the theory of knowledge — its methods, validity, and scope. This week’s triptych will explore this question: “How do you know that?” Or put another way: “How do you know what you know?”

Full disclosure: This post will reflect my bias. I advocate heuristic epistemology. The two previous posts dealt with epistemology and knowledge. This post will include notes on heuristics, which means getting to know through discovery and tacit knowledge.

In his book The Study of Man (1959), Michael Polanyi presented two fundamentally different kinds of knowledge. First was explicit knowledge. Words, numbers, diagrams, and other symbols can be used to express this knowledge. The second type of knowledge was tacit knowledge. Individuals possessing it are not aware that it exists. Therefore, tacit knowledge cannot be expressed explicitly. In his book The Tacit Dimension, Polanyi wrote: We can know more than we can tell. (Tacit: understood or implied without stating it) The image often associated with what Polanyi meant by this is the iceberg. There is much more below the surface than we can see above the surface.

Here is more of what he wrote. “Scientific discovery reveals new knowledge, but the new vision which accompanies it is not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is more than knowledge, for it is a foreknowledge of things yet unknown and at present perhaps inconceivable. … Having made a discovery, I shall never see the world again as before. My eyes have become different; I have made myself into a person seeing and thinking differently.”

“Let me now introduce the concept of a heuristic field. We assume that the gradient of a discovery, measured by the nearness of discovery prompts the mind towards it. … The assumption of a heuristic field explains now how it is possible that we acquire knowledge and believe that we can hold it, though we can do this only on evidence which cannot justify these acts by any acceptable strict rules. … The lines of force in a heuristic field should stand for an access to an opportunity, and for the obligation and the resolve to make good this opportunity, in spite of its inherent uncertainties. … Heuristic passion is also the mainspring of originality — the force which impels us to abandon an accepted framework of interpretation and commit ourselves, by the crossing of a logical gap, to the use of a new framework.”

“I propose now to show first that this tacit sharing of knowing underlies every single act of articulate communication. I shall then take in the whole network of tacit interactions on which the sharing of cultural life depends, and so lead on to a point at which our adherence to the truth can be seen to imply our adherence to a society which respects the truth, and which we trust to respect it. Love of truth and of intellectual values in general will now reappear as the love of the kind of society which fosters these values, and submission to intellectual standards will be seen to imply participation in a society which accepts the cultural obligation to serve these standards.”

Polanyi’s thinking is above my pay grade, but here is my takeaway. If we recognize in our communications that there is more below the surface than is understood and expressed explicitly, then dialogue becomes a means of surfacing, understanding, and responding to a mass of knowledge by which we find deeper truth.

If we learn to seek through discovery, we will experience the passion of the explorer. Heuristic epistemology seems to be a seminal clue for the discovery of liberating truth. So, how do we know that? We know that because we have found a path to knowledge that will always lead us to cups half full and promising more.

Q: How comfortable are you with living in a heuristic field?

Check out: https://dialogue4us.com.