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What is explicit knowledge? How should it be defined?

The distinction between explicit and implicit/tacit has played a prominent role in the discussions concerning scientific change, including scientonomic discourse. As such, having a clear definition of what explicit means is an important task.

In the scientonomic context, this term was first used by Hakob Barseghyan and Maxim Mirkin in 2018. The term is currently accepted by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is:

  • Propositional knowledge that has been openly formulated by the agent.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this term (it includes all the instances when the term was accepted as a part of a community's taxonomy):
CommunityAccepted FromAcceptance IndicatorsStill AcceptedAccepted UntilRejection Indicators
Scientonomy28 December 2018The publication of Maxim Mirkin's The Status of Technological Knowledge in the Scientific Mosaic is an indication of the acceptance of the term by the community.Yes

All Theories

The following definitions of the term have been suggested:
TheoryFormulationFormulated In
Explicit (Mirkin-Barseghyan-2018)Propositional knowledge that has been openly formulated by the agent.2018
If a definition of this term is missing, please click here to add it.

Accepted Theories

The following definitions of the term have been accepted:
CommunityTheoryAccepted FromAccepted Until
ScientonomyExplicit (Mirkin-Barseghyan-2018)1 September 2019

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this term:
Modification Community Date Suggested Summary Date Assessed Verdict Verdict Rationale
Sciento-2018-0011 Scientonomy 28 December 2018 Accept the three-fold distinction between explicit, explicable-implicit, and inexplicable. 1 September 2019 Accepted The consensus on this modification emerged primarily off-line. It was agreed that "the modification should be accepted".c1 It was also agreed "that the three-fold distinction is to be accepted as it introduces a distinction between explicable-implicit and inexplicable and thus contributes to the clarity of discussions concerning implicit and explicit."c2

Current Definition

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is Explicit (Mirkin-Barseghyan-2018).

Explicit (Mirkin-Barseghyan-2018) states: "Propositional knowledge that has been openly formulated by the agent."

According to this definition, knowledge is said to be explicit if it has been openly formulated by the agent in question. As such the notion of explicit is agent-relative. The definition was first suggested by Hakob Barseghyan and Maxim Mirkin in their The Role of Technological Knowledge in Scientific Change1 and was restated by Mirkin in his The Status of Technological Knowledge in the Scientific Mosaic.

Ontology

Existence

There is currently no accepted view concerning the existence of explicits.

Subtypes

No classes are currently accepted as subtypes of explicit.

Supertypes

In Scientonomy, there are currently no accepted supertypes of Explicit.

Associations

No associations of explicit are currently accepted.

Disjointness

No classes are currently accepted as being disjoint with this class.

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Dynamics

If a question concerning the dynamics of explicit is missing, please add it here.

References

  1. ^  Barseghyan, Hakob and Mirkin, Maxim. (2019) The Role of Technological Knowledge in Scientific Change. In Héder and Nádasi (Eds.) (2019), 5-17.