Neoliberals recast Hayek’s tacit knowledge into a commodified thing for scientific resonance

Evidence

Hayek himself almost never treated knowledge as a “thing,” but instead rather as tacit, local, and embodied—rather similar to the way in which Michael Polanyi described science. However, in order to render this proposition coherent with a number of other tenets later developed in the neoliberal thought collective, many subsequent neoliberals found it convenient to recast knowledge as more resembling a thing-like commodity, if only to have it resonate more closely with developments in the natural sciences and economics. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2162

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the larger Mont Pèlerin network historiography the reader is studying — how later thinkers simplified Hayekian epistemology for coherence. — connects to: Neoliberalism absorbed natural-science metaphors to become a comprehensive worldview beyond economics — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 153; Hayek held that dispersed market knowledge trumps even the wisest individual’s knowledge — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 225; Neoliberal Geneva experts adopted Hayek’s cybernetic systems view of world order — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 831 (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between Hayek/Polanyi’s tacit-embodied knowledge and the commodified knowledge-as-thing later neoliberals deployed.

Broader Connections

• Hayek’s epistemology drew on the same tacit-embodied model as Polanyi’s science #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2162
• Neoliberalism’s deliberate epistemic inconsistencies enabled its long-term success #corroborates (0.72)