Background Knowledge in Scientific and Technological Practices

Abstract

The article examines background, or tacit, knowledge as an explanatory resource in epistemology, philosophy, and sociology of science and technology. The initial problem lies in the dual status of this concept: on the one hand, it describes the hidden conditions for the formation of beliefs, skills, methods, and decisions, and therefore carries deterministic implications; on the other hand, it serves as a source of situational orientation, professional intuition, novelty, and freedom of action. To overcome this difficulty, the article proposes to distinguish two oppositions: the epistemic opposition between “explicit/tacit” and the practical-normative opposition between “autonomous/heteronomous”. The boundary between freedom and determination does not run between the explicit and the tacit, but rather between the creative appropriation of inherited structures and their mechanical reproduction. A correlation is established between the heteronomous and autonomizing modes of tacit knowledge, on the one hand, and epistemic constraint and resistance, on the other. Particular attention is paid to technoscientific practices, in which the Kantian dichotomy between theoretical and practical reason is transformed. Conceptions of background knowledge reveal the limitations of the scheme in which theoretical knowledge is associated with the description of necessity, while the practical dimension is associated with freedom. In scientific-technical practices, this distribution changes: knowledge is embodied in instruments, code, interfaces, models, and protocols, turning into an infrastructure of action. It is shown that formalization does not eliminate tacit knowledge: the subject evaluates the boundaries of applicability of a protocol, distinguishes between effect and noise, and relates automated output to the situation. At the micro-level of actions of individuals and collectives, freedom manifests itself as a situational recombination of skills, intuition, and normative frameworks, allowing the actor to deviate from predetermined technological and digital scenarios. At the macro-level, tacit knowledge serves as an explanatory resource for the historical transformation of practices, making visible the limitations of previous schemes of rationality through a retrospective shift. The retrospective character of the distinction between freedom and determination is substantiated: what acts as necessity in a past historical configuration is revealed in hindsight as a changeable form of organizing experience.