Collins
Harry Collins is a sociologist of science who has written extensively on tacit knowledge. Two accounts are of particular interest. First, Collins presents important empirical work on the transmission of scientific expertise in his 1985 book Changing Order. Examining attempts by a number of reputable laboratories to build working models of a newly designed laser he reports their mixed results in the following stark way:
[N]o scientist succeeded in building a laser by using only information found in published or other written sources. Thus every scientist who managed to copy the laser obtained a crucial component of the requisite knowledge from personal contact and discussion. A second point is that no scientist succeeded in building a TEA-laser where the informant was a ‘middle man ‘ who had not built a device himself. The third point is that even where the informant had built a successful device, and where information flowed freely as far as could be seen, the learner would be unlikely to succeed without some extended period of contact with the informant and, in some cases, would not succeed at all...
In sum, the flow of knowledge was such that, first, it travelled only where there was personal contact with an accomplished practitioner; second, its passage was invisible so that scientists did not know whether they had the relevant expertise to build a laser until they tried it; and, third, it was so capricious that similar relationships between teacher and learner might or might not result in the transfer of knowledge. These characteristics of the flow of knowledge make sense if a crucial component in laser building ability is ‘tacit knowledge’. [Collins 1985: 55-6]
The claims that tacit knowledge was found to be personal, invisible and capricious are based on Collins’ empirical findings.
Second, Collins has more recently attempted to articulate a model of tacit knowledge which, on the one hand, contrasts it with explicit knowledge and, on the other, attempts to demystify it.
That we humans do much of what we do without following explicit rules is no more mysterious than my cat hunting without knowing rules about hunting or a tree growing without knowing rules about forming leaves. We only think it’s mysterious if we think explicitness is the norm, but explicitness is a rare thing, restricted to humans, and used only now and again because it is often more efficient to allow causal, neural connections in the brain and body to execute an action with little (or, indeed, no) conscious calculation - after all, cats do pretty well this way. [Collins 2010b]
What is the earlier account of the transfer of tacit knowledge? Are there reasons to think it differs in kind from that of explicit knowledge? How does the earlier account relate to the later? What, according to Collins, is the antonym of ‘tacit’?
Reading
Collins, H. (1985) Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice, London: Sage pp12-16, 51-78.
Collins, H. (2010a) Tacit and Explicit Knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press pp1-12, **
Collins, H. (2010b) ‘Tacit knowledge: you don’t know how much you know’ New Scientist 31st May
Reflections on Collins
