Reflection of Tacit Knowledge - OSAKI Masaru

(...)In this article the author focuses on and tries to scrutinize tacit knowledge. In communication activities “cognition” usually plays the main role, but “tacit knowledge” does not appear on the outside, like a kuroko or a kabuki stagehand dressed in black to be inconspicuous, supporting activities of cognition as a sceneshifter or stagehand, often unconsciously.

It is reasonable to think that “cognition” and “tacit knowledge” form a harmonious whole and interact with each other while communication is carried out.

The author calls “internalized knowledge” for the knowledge which has been acquired and accumulated inside the body since birth up to this moment through the channels of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch etc. Internalized knowledge is not just knowledge, but includes information, experience, skill and knowhow.
(...) For example, in the definition of a dictionary, “yogurt is a thick liquid food that tastes slightly sour and is made from milk, or an amount of this.” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 3rd ed.). If one has never eaten yogurt yet, he or she cannot imagine the taste of yogurt. The knowledge from a dictionary is “information knowledge.” The knowledge actually acquired by eating yogurt is “body knowledge”, and the explainable portion of the body knowledge by language such as “a little sour”, “slightly sweet” etc. is “externalizable and transmittable knowledge.” The remaining unexplainable portion of the knowledge is classified into the following “unexternalizable but transmittable knowledge” or “unexternalizable and intransmittable knowledge.”

Externalizable and transmittable knowledge” is transmittable to others by expressing what one intends through language, numbers, physical movements, colors, pictures etc. “Body knowledge” is transmittable by common experience (at the same time in the same place or at a different time in a different place), but it is limited to externalizable knowledge. In this article “externalizable and transmittable knowledge” is sometimes referred to as just “externalizable knowledge”, and it can be called also “explicit knowledge.”


“Externalizable and transmittable knowledge” exists as a continuum from “knowledge transmittable with ease” to “knowledge transmittable with difficulty.” Not all externalizable and transmittable knowledge can be transmitted with ease. The former can usually be transmitted when context such as the same language or values or world view exists between communicators. The latter cannot easily be transmitted firstly when little context exists between communicators. For instance, when one speaks to someone else in a certain language and he or she does not understand the language, they cannot communicate with each other well, but they may be able to communicate to a certain extent by gesture etc. Or in the days when everybody believed in the geocentric system, even if someone advocated the heliocentric system, people would not accept it easily.(...)

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