Some knowledge is hard to write down

You ride a bicycle. Try writing down exactly how. Not just "balance" and "pedal," but the precise adjustments, the tiny corrections, the feel of the road through the handlebars.

Some knowledge is difficult to put into words. It lives in habit, in muscle memory, in the body's feel for a situation.

Earlier, Michael Polanyi gave this kind of knowledge a useful phrase: "We can know more than we can tell."

The same problem appeared when researchers tried to turn the knowledge of doctors and engineers into rules. The rules captured the outline. But some of the judgment that made the expertise real could be lost in transcription.

Rules were still useful. They simply could not capture every part of what an expert had learned through experience.

Some knowledge is hard to write down

You ride a bicycle. Try writing down exactly how. Not just "balance" and "pedal," but the precise adjustments, the tiny corrections, the feel of the road through the handlebars.

Some knowledge is difficult to put into words. It lives in habit, in muscle memory, in the body's feel for a situation.

Earlier, Michael Polanyi gave this kind of knowledge a useful phrase: "We can know more than we can tell."

Rules were still useful. They simply could not capture every part of what an expert had learned through experience.