TOK Essay
Yazar: Özlem | Kategori: Blog
( My grade was 75 %, i think it can be helpful for someone else… )
Compare and contrast knowing a friend to knowing how to swim, knowing a scientific theory and knowing a historical period. What conclusions about the nature of knowledge can you reach?
Knowledge is include all the things we learned. People use different ways to know something. Everybody has different ideas and different ways to learn and their brains are storing those informations in different ways. Some informations can not be proved, some informations can be sense in different ways. All those methods forming our brain and our knowledge. Different areas of knowledge can be defined different ways. Knowing scientific theroies, historical periods and knowing how to play guitar have different areas on knowledge system and their evaluation parts are different too. People have contact with all objects and all other people. It’s consituting new relationships between them and all those formings adding new things on their knowledge.
Since first human’s birth there are some events on the earth to perceive. He had to try all ways he can, to reach the best. For example, when he fell the lake, he saw that lake is wet and dangerous. It was the way of primitive humans’ learning. From that day people collecting datas and improving their knowledge. We can say there is a relationship between people and the things that they have. And it can be cause of the another another of knowledge, ‘to feel’. For example, when I met a new friend, I can’t know he’s good or bad for me. After I began to know him when somebody ask me something about him I can answer their questions. Know a person or know a emotion is not need to research or read book. We can define that with feelings. You can trust somebody because of his/her feelings on you. Sometimes they ask you ‘How do you know his feelings?’ and you can not answer. You can only say ‘I know, because I believe, I feel’. Morever, religion is like that. When you choose a sect on your religion you can explain your reasons but you can not prove them. It is faith. Your choosing is about your feelings. When you find kind of religion acceptable, you can choose it. But after you can find different sect which is more acceptable for you. But who determined those sects and religions? Actually all those things about your faith and your feelings.
On the other hand, sometimes feelings can not be enough. For example, we have to read books to learn historical events. There is no other way to improve our historical knowledge and when we learn about history, we can benefit from language and reason. Historical writings must be objective because there is one real and all people have to see that real. According to that point historical writings must prop up each other. Nobody can say ‘I feel that there is no WW2’. It shows that senses can not be effective on history. If you experienced something with your parents two days ago, it is your history and you can tell other people your experince easily. After two weeks you began to forget some details about that event and you began to tell the same event differently. It’ll change on base after some months and when you tell the same event you will not recognize the cahanges but it will began completely different. But if you write that event down, you can protect your history from external factors. Because of it we have to read and evaluate different sources to know historical events.
Also scientific theories like historical events too. We can not say ‘I feel, this formula must be this, Einstein is wrong!’ or ‘Newton’s 2nd rule is wrong, F is not equal m.a !’Because areas of knowledge shows us there is some definite ways on knowledge. Emotions can not use for science and history. Especially science is based on formulas and scientific investigations. Its reason is nature of knowledge. To know a scientific theory is more complicated. Because we can not experience that, if we are not scientist. In schools, sometimes we have to memorize all the formulas and theories, sometimes we can prove those theories and we assume that we know them. To know a mathematical or scientific theory is not like to know a friend. We can not use our emotions. When you calculate the mathematical operation you can not feel it or sense it with your five sense.
Learning to do something is entirely on different way. For example swimming. When we learning to swim, we are watching other people first and execute our teacher’s directions. After a definite period we gain enough knowledge about swimming and carry on the training. To learn to do something is like that. It necessitates memorization and training. When we are learning to do something, we have to use language and reason together. It’s like primitive person’s learning system. Sometimes we can use our feelings. For example when we’re swimming we can say ‘If I do that, I can swim speedly’. But it is also ‘a reason’ because we say it dur to our experiences. It’s a reason-result relation. It’s different from know a friend because we can not use our emotions and we can explain the reasons still.
Areas of knowledge has different definite ways. Language, reasons, emotions are helping to improve our knowledge accumulation in different areas. Sometimes our brain system working entirely different, like to know a friend or God. We can not prove, but we know. To read something is helpful for history, to make an experiment is useful for science, to make training is useful for swimming or playing guitar. But there is no definite way for know a friend. In that condition, we have to follow our common sense.