In the second-to-last chapter of Tim Ingold’s Making: Anthropology, Archeology, Art and Architecture, Ingold centres around the idea of ‘the hand’ and brings up philosopher Michael Polanyi in his opening statements to highlight ideas of ‘telling’, ‘articulating’, and ‘knowing’. Ingold believes that while everything can be told, not everything can be articulated, and to strengthen his argument he uses one of Polanyi’s notable pieces of work, the book The Tacit Dimension, as a framework for what Ingold believes about knowledge and how it is communicated.
Background on Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi was a physicist, chemist, and philosopher who was born in 1891 and passed away in 1976. He lived through both world wars, even migrating from Germany when Nazis took power, and his philosophical work that he developed later in life was heavily influenced by living through those global events, as well as the rise of totalitarianism as a whole (The Polanyi Society).
The book that Ingold refers to, The Tacit Dimension, was published in 1967 and introduces Polanyi’s idea of “we know more than we can tell” (Ingold 109). I was not able to access Polanyi’s full book via the UBC Library or the internet, so I am citing its mention in Ingold’s Making.
Formal vs. Personal Knowledge
Polanyi’s view on thinking and knowledge was that ‘we know more than we can tell’ (Ingold 109), and he classified knowledge into two camps: personal and formal. Formal knowledge is knowledge that can be specifically articulated and explained clearly to someone else, whereas personal knowledge cannot. Personal knowledge, to Polanyi, is the type of ‘know-how’ that only comes from the experience and practice that an individual goes through, whether it be perfecting a craft or learning how to hunt. It is not able to be articulated and thus, it cannot be taught. It is also important to note that Polanyi defines ‘telling’ as requiring “specification and articulation” (Ingold 109), and Ingold bases his views on that definition. Ingold very much disagrees with Polanyi’s sentiment about personal knowledge being ‘untellable’ and argues, for example, that the idea that the age-old example of a craftsman being suddenly unable to explain how they do what they do when asked, is unfounded (Ingold 109). Ingold argues that people are absolutely able to communicate and “tell” others what they do, no matter how innate or personal it may seem. However the telling is not necessarily verbal, but it can be shown and demonstrated. This ties into Ingold’s belief that people correspond with the world and think through making. Polanyi’s perspective doesn’t make sense through Ingold’s lens, because if unspoken stuff or lessons couldn’t be taught since they were ‘personal’, then no one could learn through making, and learning through doing is a well-established fact of life.
Ways of Telling
To further help prove his point, Ingold in this chapter highlights the different forms of ‘telling’ to both debunk Polanyi’s ideas, and set up Ingold’s overall argument, which is that everything can be ‘told’. Ingold talks about storytelling, which is a form of telling where a narrative is told that includes lessons and patterns, and then there is ‘telling’, which is the more discernible approach where people search for ‘tells’ in others. For example, studying someone’s face while playing poker is a ‘tell’, since you are using environmental clues such as the furrowing of their brow and the tapping of their fingers on the table to make a judgement for yourself about what is really going on. Ingold brings up an example of being able to tell the tone in which a handwritten note was meant (or not meant) to be received, based on the inflection marks on the letters (Ingold 110). These two methods of telling come together in storytelling as well, but if Polanyi’s method of thinking on ‘tells’ were accurate, Ingold states that that would mean all stories would have the same exact meanings or lessons because of how rigid Polanyi’s ‘formal’ and ‘personal’ knowledge perspective functions. Stories do not work that way though, as they are purposely told with a degree of open-endedness so that the audience can bring about their own meaning and takeaways from it. As an example, Little Red Riding Hood is a classic tale that, in effect, teaches children about stranger danger. The story does not set out to literally warn children of actual wolves that can eat one’s grandparent, but it is close enough to a real example of a wolf being a shady stranger that readers can figure out the lessons behind the words. For Ingold, the lessons that stories give are less of an ‘answer’ and more of a path or trail that one can follow (Ingold 110), and from there everyone gets something unique out of it. It should be noted that Ingold does cite Polanyi’s work during this chapter, so while I did not access the direct text that Ingold did, using the information gathered from the Polanyi Society website helped fill in gaps that I think are useful, which I will get into shortly.
Ways of Thinking
To close out his argument regarding Polanyi’s words specifically, Ingold refers back to Polanyi’s definition of what is required for telling, which are specification and articulation. Ingold talks about ‘articulate thinking’, which is the process of thinking about one’s words before speaking them, organizing them in the brain all in advance before sharing the thoughts with anyone else. He argues that if every time people thought it were ‘articulated’, no thinking or ‘making’ would happen because everything would have to be thought of in advance, which goes against the learning-through-doing that Ingold has mentioned in the past. While Polanyi sees the ideas of formal and personal thinking as an iceberg nearly completely submerged in water, with only the formal tip of the ice peeking out of the water (Ingold 109), Ingold sees it as a series of islands that water flows freely around, knowledge being a mix of the two (Ingold 111), instead of a cut-and-dry one or the other. Ingold highlights the fact that in Chapter 1 of Making, he also talks about the idea of ‘knowing’ and ‘telling’ being the same thing, and he argues now that Polanyi is wrong because to know is to tell (Ingold 111), and so to suggest that people possess knowledge that cannot be conveyed is preposterous. Once again, this is not to say that everything ‘told’ will be in a neat verbal package, but rather that everything a person does is telling something in some way. So while not every scholar can articulate their knowledge, they can all tell it (Ingold 111). In short, Ingold uses Polanyi’s ideas on ‘telling’ and ‘personal knowledge’ to highlight how his own perspective is correct, because to know is to tell, and even if it’s something as simple as a mechanic tuning up a car or a person knitting a sweater, even without step-by-step instructions they are wholly able to tell what they are doing to others. While I agree with Ingold’s perspective, I can also see how Polanyi growing up and experiencing the enormous world events that he did could lead someone to think more rigidly about the human experience, as the idea of ‘always telling’ is a bit daunting.
Works Cited
(apologies for the formatting, was difficult to figure out on wordpress)
Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archeology, Art and Architecture. 1st ed., Routledge, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055. Accessed 27 October 2025.
The Polanyi Society. “Michael Polanyi.” The Polanyi Society, https://polanyisociety.org/michael-polanyi/. Accessed 28 October 2025.
Hey Owen, I really liked how effectively you clarified Ingold and Polanyi’s distinct perspectives on narrative and personal understanding. You effectively linked Ingold’s concept of “thinking through making” to Polanyi’s iceberg metaphor. That visual contrast significantly aided my comprehension of why Ingold resists the notion of untellable knowledge.
What impressed me most was your observation that telling doesn’t need to be spoken. It brought to mind how much of media production, such as editing, designing, or coding, entails conveying concepts without explicitly expressing them in language. You’re still communicating, merely through a different medium. I found your choice of Little Red Riding Hood as an example to be quite clever as well. It demonstrated how storytelling allows for interpretation, aligning seamlessly with Ingold’s assertion that knowledge is fluid instead of static.
I’d be interested in learning more about your thoughts on how Polanyi’s concept of personal knowledge remains relevant today, particularly in creative or digital environments where implicit skills (such as knowing how to make edits feel appropriate) appear quite significant. In general, this was an incredibly captivating and simple-to-understand post!
Hi Meha,
I’m glad to hear that my post was clear and easy to understand, as I was worried going into it that the language was a bit dense. I also appreciate the kind words you said about my writing in general.
For your question, I think it is a great idea to connect the concept of formal vs personal knowledge and taking that to the digital landscape. Rarely do consumers of websites and digital media see the literal code that allows them to function, or understands how it works exactly, but we are still able to understand that a “Share” button means you can send a post to someone else, or how uploading a video will be seen by the public. You are right about editing in particular where, despite there being tutorials available online, no single tutorial is going to give you the precise series of editing effects that you desire, and that is where learning through making comes into play. Learning how to make edits and other digital aspects feel appropriate certainly comes more innately to certain people, and I think using Polanyi and Ingold’s perspectives is a fun way to think about it. I still side with Ingold here, since my example of learning how to become better with editing through making is how Ingold would perceive it.
Hi Owen! I really like this post and also think you did a great job of writing clearly. This is my favourite sentence: “Once again, this is not to say that everything ‘told’ will be in a neat verbal package, but rather that everything a person does is telling something in some way”. The way you used Ingold’s manipulation of the verb “tell” by bringing in the continuous from “telling” and also the noun (a “tell”) was very clever. I’m curious which of the two scholars (Polanyi or Ingold) you personally agree with. This made me think of my experience in sports, where sometimes coaches will struggle to articulate what strategies they use or things they think of in the execution some skill. In this case, I would agree that showing is telling, and a big part of understanding how to do something is through demonstration. However, playing a sport you sometimes have to come up with your own heuristic for how to do something, when others’ don’t work for you. There’s also the aspect of muscle memory, and the sorts of “unconscious” knowledge that can reside in your body; which is of course controlled by your brain, but is focused moment-to-moment on other parts of the game and environmental cues. Anyways, those are just some of my thoughts! Great post.
Hi! Thanks for your kind words about my writing and clarity. For your question, I’d say I have to agree with Ingold’s perspective on all knowledge being able to be told. While I do think Polanyi is write about the fact that sometimes, people cannot communicate knowledge super clearly, Ingold’s whole point is that the conveying of that knowledge doesn’t have to be verbal, as simply just acting it out/doing it is a valid form of communicating. Your sports connection is interesting too, as I can definitely see that scenario happening where your coach can’t specifically explain why a play might work, or where you develop your own heuristic and muscle memory for a game. Muscle memory I think is one of the best examples when it comes to the Polanyi/Ingold arguments, since the name means it inherently cannot be easily verbally communicated as it resides primarily in your muscles (really your brain), and comes as second-nature when acting. Despite this, acting out the muscle memory is definitely ‘telling’ anyone who watches how to do it, and it becomes up to them to learn it and/or develop the muscle memory for it on their own.