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christa wusinich's picture

divorced from meaning

I felt rewarded when I arrived at the end of our selection from Michael Polyani's The Tacit Dimension. Beyond his classifying of tacit knowledge into its various aspects, namely, its functional structure (recognition of a duality in tacit understanding) phenomenal structure (whereby terms distal and proximal name the relationship that allows us to know), semantic aspect ( whereby we give meaning to or derive meaning from our tacit knowing experience), and the ontological aspect (or the knowledge we have derived from particulars to arrive at a comprehensive whole)...Polyani does something refreshing that resonates deeply...he warns us that divulging ourselves into particulars, may leave us agitated and at an utter loss where meaning is concerned..."how an unbridled lucidity can destroy our understanding of complex matters (Polyani 18)." Rather than ending on any sour notes where meaning is forever elusive, Polyani tells us that we can come back to what is comprehensive with a greater appreciation for it having painstakingly dwelled in a dissection.

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