Thinking It and Speaking It
39
For example, when you’re repairing a motor you must know each individual
part, where it belongs and how it connects with other parts. This kind of
knowledge is encoded in a different kind of memory from pictures or events:
It is kept in what psychologists call explicit memory and is saved in a form
similar to language. Every kind of animal has explicit memory for practical
details: It is useful to think of it as “precision memory”. When carrying out
tasks, all animals (ourselves included) must switch back and forth between a
panoramic and a precision way of looking. Non-human animals, of course,
don’t possess language, but they categorize important objects (for example
other animals, flowers, trees) by mental tokens which represent objects.
The combination of Gestalt vision with knowledge in the precision mode—
together with a channel for easily passing information between them—
accounts largely for what man has been able to achieve. It is in the precision
mode that we are able to communicate in sentences, make intricate plans and
analyze the way things work. But the precision way of scrutinizing the world is
useful only when it is built on a foundation of Gestalt perception which gives
us a comprehensive view of the wider context.
Growing the Tree of Knowledge
The average person gathers a prodigious amount of knowledge in the course
of a lifetime. According to the philosopher Michael Polányi, most of this vast
repository of learning dwells in the mind in the form of tacit knowledge, that is,
knowledge that is not expressed in words. It consists of insights, observations,
facts and lore all interconnected in a vast and fluid network. For the most part,
this knowledge is structured in Gestalt mental images. 8
Mental images are not necessarily pictorial—in fact, most of them appear
to us in the form of schemas that are picture-like but do not depict specific
objects. Nonetheless, their Gestalt structure—the way component parts are
combined together in intricate ways—is very much like the way a visual scene is
organized, hence it feels similar. That is the reason we use so many visual words
to express understanding: For instance when something is clearly explained,
you respond “I see! ” This is not merely an expression, for quite literally you
behold a mental image in mind. Moreover you sometimes reflect about things,
and when you speculate you’re using the Latin word specula which means
mirror. An explanation is either clear or murky; in fact, it may be lucid, from
the word for “light”, or even brilliant.
Our repository of tacit knowledge is not stored in words and sentences but
in whole images. It could not be otherwise: As explained in Section 1, human
39
For example, when you’re repairing a motor you must know each individual
part, where it belongs and how it connects with other parts. This kind of
knowledge is encoded in a different kind of memory from pictures or events:
It is kept in what psychologists call explicit memory and is saved in a form
similar to language. Every kind of animal has explicit memory for practical
details: It is useful to think of it as “precision memory”. When carrying out
tasks, all animals (ourselves included) must switch back and forth between a
panoramic and a precision way of looking. Non-human animals, of course,
don’t possess language, but they categorize important objects (for example
other animals, flowers, trees) by mental tokens which represent objects.
The combination of Gestalt vision with knowledge in the precision mode—
together with a channel for easily passing information between them—
accounts largely for what man has been able to achieve. It is in the precision
mode that we are able to communicate in sentences, make intricate plans and
analyze the way things work. But the precision way of scrutinizing the world is
useful only when it is built on a foundation of Gestalt perception which gives
us a comprehensive view of the wider context.
Growing the Tree of Knowledge
The average person gathers a prodigious amount of knowledge in the course
of a lifetime. According to the philosopher Michael Polányi, most of this vast
repository of learning dwells in the mind in the form of tacit knowledge, that is,
knowledge that is not expressed in words. It consists of insights, observations,
facts and lore all interconnected in a vast and fluid network. For the most part,
this knowledge is structured in Gestalt mental images. 8
Mental images are not necessarily pictorial—in fact, most of them appear
to us in the form of schemas that are picture-like but do not depict specific
objects. Nonetheless, their Gestalt structure—the way component parts are
combined together in intricate ways—is very much like the way a visual scene is
organized, hence it feels similar. That is the reason we use so many visual words
to express understanding: For instance when something is clearly explained,
you respond “I see! ” This is not merely an expression, for quite literally you
behold a mental image in mind. Moreover you sometimes reflect about things,
and when you speculate you’re using the Latin word specula which means
mirror. An explanation is either clear or murky; in fact, it may be lucid, from
the word for “light”, or even brilliant.
Our repository of tacit knowledge is not stored in words and sentences but
in whole images. It could not be otherwise: As explained in Section 1, human