It is a commonplace that all research must start from a problem. Research can be successful only if the problem is good; it can be original only if the problem is original. But how can one see a problem, let alone a good and original problem? For to see a problem is to see something that is hidden. It is to have an intimation of the coherance of hitherto not comprehended particulars. The problem is good if this intimation is true; it is original if no one else can see the possibilities of that we are anticipating. To see a problem that will lead to a great discovery is not just to see something hidden, but to see something of which the rest of the humanity cannot have even an inkling (21/22)

(...) The solution which Plato offered for this paradox (to search for the solution of a problem is meaningless or impossible, SD) was that all discovery is a remembering of past lives (22)

(...) The kind of tacit (fore, SD)knowledge that solves the paradox of the Meno (of Plato, SD) consistst in the intimation of something hidden, which we may yet discover (23)

Polanyi 1966 The Tacit Dimension