The bread making machine: an analysis of the tacit knowledge involved in the exercise of practical skills and the behavior of artifacts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31977/grirfi.v23i3.3536Keywords:
Bread making machine; Master baker; Tacit knowledge; Practical skills; Aspectual representations.Abstract
In the late 1980s, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. released the first home-use bread making machine. Its launch was so successful that knowledge sociologists undertook the task of analyzing the knowledge involved in its design and production. To accomplish this, Takeuchi and Nonaka (1995) extensively examined the concept of tacit knowledge (POLANYI, 1966/2009). They argued that engineers and developers managed to articulate and translate the tacit knowledge inherent in the skilled practice of a master baker into the design of the bread-making machine, reproducing the same practical outcome. In the present study, I will discuss their interpretation of the notion of tacit knowledge and contend that the tacit knowledge involved in the exercise of practical skills cannot be articulated and translated into the design of the bread making machine without losing, at the very least, a substantial portion of those skills. To support this argument, I will draw on contributions from the sociology of science and phenomenology to argue that the tacit knowledge embedded in the skilled practice of our master baker depends on a familiarity relationship with the environment. This relationship is epistemically relevant insofar as it involves aspectual representations of our environment, which guide the actions of our master baker. In contrast, the bread making machine lacks such representations and, as a result, cannot involve, at the very least, the same type of tacit knowledge as a guide for its behavior.
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