The Illegible Real

Why Tacit Knowledge Matters More Than Ever

“The real is what does not depend on my idea of it.”
- Jacques Lacan, Seminar XXI

A farmer knows soil in ways no analysis captures. A jazz musician knows when to break rules in ways no theory explains. This gap - between lived knowledge and formal representation - haunts every system we build.

James C. Scott saw found genius in farmers resisting state plans, and called their know-how, metis, local knowledge.

Rabbi Haym Soloveitchik describes the same phenomenon in “Rupture and Reconstruction.” Before the Holocaust, Jewish practice was learned primarily through observation, not texts. The Jewish tradition’s injunction against writing down Oral Torah speaks to this point—the heart of Torah cannot be formalized, only transmitted through a living community, a teacher-student relationship. Soloveitchik contrasts “mimetic knowledge” (learning through imitation) with the erudition that came to be a cope after the Shoah—when it was impossible to consult previous generations because they were obliterated.

Nassim Taleb celebrates the street-smart wisdom of “Fat Tony” over academic models propounded by “IYIs” (“intellectual yet idiots”). Fat Tony passes fitness tests that make him a Popperian hero over and against the top-down plans of a Platonizing theorist. Fat Tony resists the representational knowledge of state planners. Elites are rewarded for abstraction. Fat Tony is a particularist.

Heidegger argues for the primacy of being in the world over metaphysical speculation pretending to offer an Archimidean view.

Economist Tyler Cowen advocates for the central importance of anthropology and field research. His job is not simply to build models, but to “crack cultural codes.”

Leo Strauss argues that the deepest philosophical teachings are esoteric. You have to learn from a “rebbe,” so to speak, or else you’re left with the standard, consensus reading of the text, not the method for discovering its subversive teaching. Each describes the same pattern: vital knowledge resists formalization.

Of course, the ability to abstract is what leads to technological and economic progress. Localism by itself is primitive in all senses, and shouldn’t be glorified. The infant mortality rate doesn’t look great in societies that prefer homeopathy to scientific method.

Still, as our world becomes more measured and quantified, this illegible knowledge grows in significance. AI processes millions of papers but can’t match a doctor’s intuition. Educational metrics multiply while employers hunt for ineffable judgment. The key is not to oppose the legible, but to appreciate its limits.

Illegible knowledge—metis—exposes positivism’s limits.

Social science can tell us what follows from our values, but not what to value. Historically, we learned what to value from role models, not textbook principles.

The future belongs not to those who can make everything legible, but to those who can navigate between formal and tacit knowledge, understanding the unique power of each. As our tools for measuring the world grow stronger, we must get better at preserving what can’t be measured.