The Tacit Image: Michael Polanyi
Revisited
Gábor Palló
Budapest University of Technology
and Economics, Visual Learning Lab
Painting 1970
• Meaning 1: canvas
coated by paint with
brush of an artist
• Meaning 2: picture
depicts the
surroundings of the
painter
• Meaning 3: cultural,
aesthetic, moral,
financial value
Problems
• Are the three meanings connected by
illusion?
• Does painting imitate reality?
Michael Polanyi, 1891-1976
• 1914, Budapest: Medical
doctor, 1914
• 1920-1933,Berlin: KW
Institute, physical
chemistry
• 1934-1947, Manchester:
physical chemistry
• 1944: FRS
• 1948-1958 Manchester:
chair of social sciences
• After 1958 Oxford:
Merton College
Church of Saint Ignatius of
Loyola, Rome
• Andrea Pozzo
1642 -1709
The church inside
Ceiling of the church
Ceiling and pilasters
Pilasters 3 Dimensions
Part of fresco 3 D
Three dimensional pictures on the
pilasters
Illusion?
• Pozzo’s fresco can be seen in 3d from a
certain point
• Representational perspective painting
seems 3D from everywhere
• Difference: distance of viewing
– Perspective painting is on flat canvas
– Pozzo’s fresco on curved surface of pilasters
and vault
The influence of distance
• 1. Painting falls into pieces
• 2. We see only paint plots on canvas
1. Picture falls apart Velazquez
Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour) 1656
2. Painted canvas and picture
Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses
Either/or
• Ernst Gombrich: either picture of painted canvas
– Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial
Representation. London: Phaidon 1960
• Polanyi both: explanation is based on tacit
knowledge
– „We know more than we can tell”
– Explicit knowledge
– Skills, recognition of faces
Core of P`s argumentation: Gestalt
psychology
• 1920s: Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler,
and Kurt Koffka
• Humans recognize entire shapes and
structures - Holism
– rather than elements and put the structures
together
• G P has principles that govern perception
Figure/Ground principle
• Figure: seen in focus
• Ground: seen in the
background
• We see something
either as figure or as
ground
Figure/Ground changes
•
M.C. Escher print
Danish
psychologist
Edgar Rubin
Rubin vase
Polanyi`s generalization: blind man
with white cane
• Perceives the curb
without seeing it
• Focal awareness:
curb
• Subsidiary
awareness: cane
– Tacit component
• similar to figure
(focal)/ground
(subsidiary)
integration
• No either/or dichotomy
• Focal and subsidiary awareness are
integrated
– Curb cannot be perceived without feeling the
pressure of the cane
Connection of 1. and 2. meaning of
painting
• Integration of panted canvas and
perspective picture
• Focally aware of picture, subsidiary aware
of painted canvas
• Pozzo: no painted canvas, nothing to be
subsidiary aware
Meaning 3: Illusion or Reality
• Flatness of painted canvas and depth of
perspective is united
– This is integration of incompatible elements
• New quality is born: it is not imitation of
nature
– Colors, forms, etc. are different on a painting
from nature
• The new quality is transnatural
Extension to science
• “all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in
tacit knowledge”
• Scientific knowledge needs skills,
• Scientific knowledge integrates compatible
elements
• New approach to empiricism
• Leads to anti-positivist conclusions, Kuhn,
Lakatos, Feyerabend