2.3 Knowledge exceeds explicit statement
2.3.1 Scholarship depends upon explicit expression. Questions, definitions, Methods, Findings, citations, Arguments, and corrections must become sufficiently articulated to be examined by others.
2.3.2 Yet knowing is not exhausted by what has already been stated. The possibility of explicit scholarship does not imply that every condition of judgment, perception, skill, or understanding can be rendered fully explicit.
2.3.3 Polanyi (1958/2015) opposed the ideal of wholly impersonal knowledge produced through completely specifiable rules. Knowing involves the participation of a knower whose attention, commitment, perception, judgment, and skill cannot be removed from inquiry without changing its character.
2.3.4 Personal knowledge does not mean arbitrary personal opinion. It means that knowledge is achieved through the responsible participation of persons rather than generated by an impersonal mechanism detached from judgment.
2.3.5 The tacit dimension concerns what a person relies upon without being able to articulate every component fully at the moment of action.
2.3.6 A researcher may recognize that a formulation is inadequate, perceive a pattern before being able to define it, judge a source as consequential, handle an instrument skillfully, or sense that an interpretation has violated the phenomenon before possessing a complete verbal account.
2.3.7 Tacit participation does not exempt scholarly work from articulation. It explains why articulation is a transformation rather than the simple transcription of already completed internal content.
2.3.8 Explicit statements emerge from a broader field of embodied capacity, prior learning, practical familiarity, attention, language, and situated judgment. What becomes explicit may in turn reorganize that tacit field, making new distinctions and later actions possible.
2.3.9 Tacit and explicit should therefore not be treated as two substances stored in separate locations. They name distinguishable dimensions of knowing that remain dynamically related.
2.3.10 A Method can be described explicitly while still requiring cultivated judgment in application. A Construct can possess a canonical definition while its responsible use depends on recognizing borderline cases.
2.3.11 A bibliographic standard can specify fields while source identification still requires interpretation. A prompt can organize an operation without replacing the competence required to evaluate its output.
2.3.12 Scholarly governance seeks to make consequential decisions explicit wherever criticizability requires it. It does not pretend that every skilled, perceptual, ethical, or practical dimension can be converted without remainder into a rule.
2.3.13 Tacit knowing must not become a sanctuary for unexplained authority. A researcher cannot defend a consequential exclusion, interpretation, or conclusion merely by invoking intuition when reasons, Evidence, or criteria could reasonably be made available.
2.3.14 Explicit governance must also not become a fantasy of complete formalization. More fields, instructions, metadata, and procedures can create the appearance of transparency while leaving the decisive act of judgment concealed.
2.3.15 The appropriate question is therefore not whether scholarship can eliminate tacit knowing. It is which dimensions must become explicit for another person to identify, understand, criticize, verify, apply, or correct the Work, and which forms of practical judgment remain irreducible but accountable.
2.3.16 PSB, GBB7, GSV, and SSN emerge within this tension. They stabilize location, sources, versions, and representation without claiming to replace intellectual judgment.
2.3.17 Their purpose is not to automate scholarship. It is to prevent consequential responsibilities from disappearing into undocumented practice.
