Though it is a psychological fact that human beings acquire, retain, and employ tacit knowledge, accounts of its nature and function in perception, memory, cognition, language, and learning vary across disciplines. In epistemology, the concept of tacit knowledge was pioneered by the scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) in his Personal Knowledge (1956) and The Tacit Dimension (1966). Drawing on Gestalt psychology, Polanyi developed a theory of tacit knowledge by extending the perceptual model of attending from subsidiary clues or particulars (bodily processes, sensory experiences, memory, intimations) to a focal whole (pattern, object, entity) to a general model that holds cognitive processes ranging form identifying objects, performing skills, solving (scientific) problems to understanding texts or persons. Tacit knowing is seen to consist in relying on integrated and interiorized...