Unpack and Settle In

Building on our discussions of your prescribed titles, explore them a bit further by way of knowledge questions. By the end of Monday (9/28), please post one KQ for each title (numbered accordingly). Your KQ should make clear to which area of knowledge it leads, and may also refer to ways of knowing. If you're interested, here's a bit more on William of Ockham.

Infinite Ways of Knowing

This week, I invite you on a journey: to India, backward and forward through time, and along the number line. Along the way, you will consider multiple approaches to and embodiments of infinity, encounter a genius so profound we are only beginning to understand him and his work 95 years after his death, redefine the relationships of causal ideas, and examine the possibility of recreating the thoughts of others. Begin with this article about the life and ideas of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Note with special joy the author's reference to ways of knowing. Take the time to understand the mathematics explained. Harken back to our days of logic and discussions of attempts at proof of God's existence. And feel free to delve into the work of Vi Hart (in Links at the right) for clear, entertaining takes on several concepts touched upon in the article. For your post, please extract two KQs--specific and tied to AoKs and WoKs--from the article. Explore and answer them, and consider other moments to which they might be applied.

Eliminating Tone Deafness

This week, please watch and listen as artist Neil Harbisson describes how he listens to color.  In responding (which please do for your local end of Sunday), please consider two questions: to what extent can one sensory way of knowing be substituted for another?  Which of your ways of knowing does this lecture employ or trigger, and how and why? Consider view points in addition to your own, please.

I Favor Active Passivity

Choices, choices, choices. You may think, at first, that the prompt below is a part of my ongoing love affair with science, but this isn't about me. Your task this week is to deconstruct and analyze this prescribed title from the 2015 TOK essays: "'There are only two ways in which humankind can produce knowledge: through passive observation or through active experiment.' To what extent do you agree with this statement?"

Before you post, take the time to parse the pieces of this title. What does each part mean? What are you being asked to do? For your answer to the prompt, choose one Area of Knowledge and identify two Real Life Situations from within that AoK. Derive two KQs from the title and analyze their applications to both RLSs. I look forward to your thoughts, due by Sunday's end.

You Can Lead a Class to Areas of Knowledge...

I'm fascinated by how wrong I was about the last post--thank you. I was certain many of you would head for the Natural Sciences in search of unexpiring truths, surprisingly anachronistic facts, or both. Kudos for your original approaches.

This week, I leave you no choice. As shared through Theory of Knowledge.net's monthly newsletter, please read this article in The Independent. Consider what it reveals about science, about journalism, and about our willingness (eagerness? need?) to believe both. What ways of knowing contribute to our credulity? Please extract and discuss the implications of two knowledge questions. Due Sunday, as usual.

Can Knowledge Be Overdue?

Our Library is undergoing a transformation this summer. Along with the new layout, new computers, and new home for the Technology office, many old books are making way for the change (that's a bibliophile's gentle way of saying we're recycling them). As I helped to clear out part of the History section, a question occurred to me: at what point do original ideas become historical curiosities? Are there circumstances in which there can be a universal answer to this question? Are there ideas that do not go out of date? If the answer to this is discipline specific, are there exceptions? Can a mathematical theorem prove Euro-centric? Can a book entitled Our Expanding World: The Age of Exploration provide objective accounts of history, despite its titular perspective? For this week's post, identify two moments of knowledge from different AoKs and examine this train of thought in each. You needn't answer all of my questions, but you should answer some, and you may come up with questions of your own.

Feeling Overextended?

Welcome to summer, Knowers. To ease into our intellectual explorcation, please begin with what you're already doing: share your EE research question; extract a knowledge question, couched in explicitly TOK language; apply and answer the question in a context other than your EE. As will be the case all summer, your post is due by the local end of Sunday.

Tell Us How You Smell

Think back, knowers, or observe yourself on the fly: identify and share a moment of knowledge from the past month that incorporates both Language and Sense Perception as ways of knowing. Write a concrete knowledge question, extracted from that moment, and then answer it with equal clarity. As a reminder, here's a KQ formulation guide. Please use it's vocabulary. This post is due Wednesday night by 9 pm.

I'm Relying on You to Think for Yourself

Iron strings, lustrous firmaments, corn growing in my brain: was Emerson paid by the metaphor? With or without figurative language, I'd like you to draw a connection between an idea in Self-Reliance and your own sphere. Think, too, about how RWE's ideas connect to the distinction we drew between personal and shared knowledges. Here, then, is your task: choose one sentence from our Self-Reliance excerpt. Explicate the line you choose, carefully parsing its language and content (are they the same? Way of Knowing alert!) Relate to it a moment of knowledge from your own life (class, conversation, "gleam of light which flashes across [your] mind from within," etc.). Extract a knowledge question, and use it to explicitly connect "your own thought" to Emerson's. In rendering your thoughts back to us, remember to explicitly identify and examine the relevant ways of knowing and areas of knowledge. Please complete your advance "on Chaos and the Dark" by 5pm Sunday.

Let's Go On A Brain Safari

For Sunday night, please write reflectively and bravely about what you would like to explore. The Extended Essay is an opportunity to blaze an intellectual trail into new territory. You can take risks, delve deeply and inventively, hone skills and forge new ones. Below is the list of strengths you generated in class, based on your own experiences. In your writing, consider which of your strengths your project might draw upon, which new ones it might engender, and how they relate to the topic or topics that interest you. Please have this posted by 6:30 Sunday evening.

Confidence                        Problem solving                        Persistence

Responsibility                   Quick learner                             Patience

Perseverance                     Independent learner                   Motivated by competition

Curiosity                           Respect                                       Empathy

Optimism                          Determination                            Accepting Challenges

Humor                               Risk taking                                 Calm under pressure

Open Minded                    Challenge yourself                     Good decision making

Know limitations               Bravery                                      Know what works for you

Focus                                 Time management                      Responsive to circumstance

Better self for betterment of others