Harry Collins: Tacit and Explicit Knowledge (2010)

“Much of what humans know we cannot say. And much of what we do we cannot describe. For example, how do we know how to ride a bike when we can’t explain how we do it? Abilities like this were called “tacit knowledge” by physical chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, but here Harry Collins analyzes the term, and the behavior, in much greater detail, often departing from Polanyi’s treatment.

In Tacit and Explicit Knowledge, Collins develops a common conceptual language to bridge the concept’s disparate domains by explaining explicit knowledge and classifying tacit knowledge. Collins then teases apart the three very different meanings, which, until now, all fell under the umbrella of Polanyi’s term: relational tacit knowledge (things we could describe in principle if someone put effort into describing them), somatic tacit knowledge (things our bodies can do but we cannot describe how, like balancing on a bike), and collective tacit knowledge (knowledge we draw that is the property of society, such as the rules for language). Thus, bicycle riding consists of some somatic tacit knowledge and some collective tacit knowledge, such as the knowledge that allows us to navigate in traffic. The intermixing of the three kinds of tacit knowledge has led to confusion in the past; Collins’s book will at last unravel the complexities of the idea.

Tacit knowledge drives everything from language, science, education, and management to sport, bicycle riding, art, and our interaction with technology. In Collins’s able hands, it also functions at last as a framework for understanding human behavior in a range of disciplines.”

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2010
ISBN 0226113809, 9780226113807
xiv+186 pages

Reviews: Alan Warde (Sociological Review, 2010), Massimo Mazzotti (Isis, 2011), Wiebe E. Bijker (Technology & Culture, 2011), Stephen P. Turner (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2011), Park Doing (Social Studies of Science, 2011), Joseph Agassi (Philosophy of Social Sciences, 2013).
Commentary: Philosophia Scientiae (Léna Soler, Sjoerd D. Zwart et al., 2013).

Publisher

PDF

Benjamin Gaulon (ed.): DeFunct/ReFunct, catalogue (2011)

Mobile phones, communication devices, game consoles and PCs have short lifespans. How can we rethink, reuse and reinvent our e-waste? Hardware hacking, programming and physical computing are becoming part of artistic scope. There is a growing interest among artists and designers to know more about these domains of creation.

Catalogue for the DeFunct/ReFunct exhibition held in Rua Red, Dublin, as part of the Glitch Festival.

With texts by Benjamin Gaulon, Garnet Hertz & Jussi Parikka, Rosa Menkman, Alessandro Ludovico, Eduardo Navas, Phillip Stearns.

Featured artists: LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus), Gijs Gieskes, Recyclism (Benjamin Gaulon), MNK (Karl Klomp), TokTek (Tom Vebrugen), Rosa Menkman

Publisher RUA RED, Dublin, Ireland
ISBN 9780957077713
32 pages

exhibition

PDF

Émile Zola: Germinal (1885) [FR, EN, DE]

Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Often considered Zola’s masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French tradition, the novel – an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers’ strike in northern France in the 1860s – has been published and translated in over one hundred countries as well as inspiring five film adaptations and two television productions.

The title refers to the name of a month of the French Republican Calendar, a spring month. Germen is a Latin word which means “seed”; the novel describes the hope for a better future that seeds amongst the miners.

commentary (Ruth Scurr, The Guardian, 2010)

wikipedia

PDF (French, published by G. Charpentier, 1885)
PDF (French, published by G. Charpentier, 1900, Vol. 1)
PDF (French, 1900, Vol. 2)
PDF (English, translated by Carlynne, published by Belford, Clarke, Chicago/New York, 1885)
PDF (English, translated by Havelock Ellis, 1894)
PDF (EPUB, German)