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.
Besides natural instinct, which can be considered 'given' knowledge, I do believe that humans only learn by observing and doing, what else is there? There are sometimes moments of knowledge wherein the idea seems to pop up out of the blue. However, these thoughts are always triggered by past knowledge, experiences and memories. For instance the person I dreamt about last night who was selling me yellow strawberries in Iceland is a person whose face I've seen before. Brains simply cannot construct new ideas, just like how one cannot imagine a new color.
ReplyDeleteAOK: Human sciences
KQ1: To what extent is picking up on social queues instinctual and not acquired through expience.
RLS 1: Yesterday, while hanging out with a boy, I realized just how little I know about interacting with members of the opposite sex. I realized that almost all the experience I thought I had from talking to boys in middle school was now rendered useless. Despite this, I knew how to act and what to say. Two things popped into my head, the first being that I knew what to do/ expect thanks to all the 80's movies I've seen and the other being that communicating could possibly be instinctual and not need to be learned. While mulling this over later, I realized that my actions must have been derived from The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, etc. because I know quite a few homeschooled children and almost all of them have no idea how to act in similar social situations.
KQ 2: Do human beings have individual moralities or are our moral compasses made to fit the ideologies around us.
RLS 2: While some of my dad's extended family was visiting this past week, we decided to go out to dinner. At the restaurant, my great uncle, his daughter and her husband all ordered lobster dishes. My dad and I won't eat lobster and ordered hamburgers. I have grown up snorkeling with sea life since the age of four and have been told far too many stories about how lobsters/ crabs scream when being boiled to ever try them. At one point, we started talking about the morality of boiling crustaceans alive and the extended family said that lobsters are essentially bugs and that there should be no guilt surrounding eating them. It was interesting to see how they each seemed to share each other's ideologies- my great uncle raised his daughter to eat guilt-free lobster and she in turn impacted her husband's thinking. Thinking more deeply on this subject, I realized that there really aren't many things that I think are morally wrong or right that my parents and I disagree on. Anything that we do disagree on morality-wise, my sister and I agree on. In this way, I don't really have my own moral compass, I have a collection of other people's.
I certainly do not agree with this statement that passive observation and active experiment are the only two ways of learning. Yes, the two means the title suggests can produce knowledge, but what about thinking? How can any one to learn and gain knowledge if one do not process these information after he or she observes and experiments? Also, how can people to understand any type of art in depth without putting in their personal thoughts and emotion besides only looking at the aesthetic? People can never improve themselves without being reflective, and this can be best expressed by thinking.
ReplyDeleteTake the Arts as examples as AoK. In my opinion, real arts are things that originally created by artist in order to express their opinion and emotions, which being said, thinking is the fundamental step of the process.
KQ 1. To what extent can our passive observations and active experiment stimulate our creativity?
RLS: Today I saw some pictures in a magazine that were really interesting. It was a serie of creative photographies of parts in London. The buildings and other objects looked very funny and vivid because the artiest added some embellishments on them. For instance, the plain brown wall was decorated with huge eyes and white teeth, which looked like swallowing whoever were entering the door. Or the symbolic hats of the guards are animated with a funny looking face. All these littler creations made London look not so serious but more interesting. The creativity of the artist might most likely came from his / her observation of London, but the photos became interesting because his processed thoughts after his observation.
KQ 2. How can thinking help people to improve based on their previous experience?
RLS: In general, improvement can be made based on active experiment with reflective corrections. In the field of arts, artists need to first think some thing as a draft to start a piece of art, and when the draft is created, the artists normally revise it more and more with more thinking. Taking literature as example, many authors have tons of first draft but only publish certain amounts of them after many many times revisions. Because writing is thinking and revisions is the process of the changes of thinks.
From my interpretation, the title conveys that humans gain knowledge only from two ways: one is to observe directly from the outside world, and the other is to acquire things by devoting into things on their own. I agree with this statement, because I think those two ways are where my knowledge mostly come from.
ReplyDeleteAoK: Ethics
RLS1: One of my classmate in my summer program has a strong personality and tend to say everything directly without considering others’ feelings. My roommates thus feel uncomfortable getting along with her, and started to separate her from us by not talking to her at all. However, I feel that it is not okay to intentionally separate a person from us, because that will make her extremely uncomfortable, which is the situation that nobody likes. Although I have never been in such a condition before, I have observed others doing something like this and how bad the situation of that person had been. Hence, I gained such a knowledge about not alienate people from my past observations on others.
KQ1: How does having a real experience affect the intensity of our emotions on one particular event?
I think that when we actually experience something, we are likely to have a deeper feelings about that event, and thus have an intenser appeal of emotions. In this case, I feel sympathetic towards those who are separated by others when I observe as an outsider. If I have been in that similar situation and feel as depressed as that girl does, I will likely to have a stronger feeling about separating people as a horrible behavior.
RLS2: During one lecture I had recently about the Bill of Rights, the professor talked about religious freedom, that people have the right to practice their own religions, and the best way to protect it is to separate the government from religious issues. Such a proposal in the Constitution does not come easily; instead, it was formed as a result of rebellions and conflicts caused by binding religions with political issues in a non-secular state before. Hence, the whole society experimented such issues before the final establishment of the amendment.
KQ2: To what extent do active experiments result in a more objective and valuable knowledge?
Active experiments, especially multiple ones are likely to produce more objective and valuable things than simply setting things up to a large extent. In this case, the principle of freedom of religion is confirmed after years of experiments: the whole society had undergone various events and conflicts to come up with such an amendment. If the government simply set up that freedom of religion is completely free, problems such as using religion as an excuse of illegal practices will occur. On the other hand, without examination, if the rule is set up as prohibition of religious, there will be incredible religious conflicts that undermine the stability of the society.
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?"
ReplyDeleteI agree with this statement because when I thought of wildly different scenarios in my life where I "generated" knowledge, it was through one of these means. On some occasions, it took me a bit more time and consideration to link the moment of knowledge with the way it was generated, but I ultimately always came back to the same conclusion at the root of the issue.
AoK: Human sciences
KQ 1: How can social pressures lead one to develop a completely different set of social standards and habits than those previously adhered to?
RLS 1: I just got back a few days ago from a two-week choral course I participated in in England. I was the only American and one of the only two not-British people out of 52 participants, and upon my arrival, I immediately felt a far greater culture shock than I had anticipated. Given that England is an English-speaking country, I had expected to blend in seamlessly and immediately without any sort of cultural difference in terms of conversation and even language. However, after the first day, I was so unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the ways in which the British teenagers around me used language and carried on conversations that I subconsciously began changing my speech patterns, mannerisms, and conversational habits to mirror theirs. In this way, my ingrained sense of how to interact with people was completely but subtly changed because of the intangible social pressure I felt to blend in. This used passive observation to develop new knowledge (how to blend in with a bunch of British teenagers).
KQ 2: How can the act of discussing a moral issue lead one to change one's own conclusions?
RLS 2: In TOK, I often find myself carrying out an internal dialogue in response to a question that someone asked or simply as a train of thought generated by observing someone else. The real brain-breakers like the unstoppable bullet and impenetrable wall lead me to automatically try and come up with some sort of loophole to bypass the seemingly insurmountable question by thinking of as many scenarios and combinations of ideas as possible. This also happens when discussing a moral issue with someone both in TOK and outside of class - since I'm writing this post from debate camp, tossing ideas about something like corporal punishment back and forth have actually caused me to alter the knowledge I thought I held about the issue and to change my moral views on the subject simply by discussing it. In this way, I think it could be considered active experimentation because when the beliefs are put to the test and fiddled with in conversation, they are subject to change and new knowledge can be generated.
"'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?""'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?”
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with what Sophie said in her post- that broadly, these two mentioned ways of producing knowledge are the only ways- with the exception of instinct or “given” knowledge. The reason we can’t really count instinct here is that it isn’t knowledge that is being produced. It’s already in place. So, with that being said, the only ways to gain knowledge are to observe or do. I agree with this statement.
AOK:
I’m going to keep avoiding the sciences. So… arts.
RLS1:
The musical that I’m in right now, Annie, has a lot of double cast roles, including mine (Ms. Hannigan). This means that I spend a lot of time watching the other girl who plays her rehearse a scene, rather than doing it myself. I’m still responsible for knowing all the blocking and all the things the director asks us to do, but sometimes I’m not able to take in the direction while doing the scene, and I have to trust my memory when I finally get a chance to do it myself. Sometimes this works out alright, and sometimes not.
KQ1: How does our retention of knowledge differ when it comes from passive observation, versus active experiment?
RLS2:
I was having a conversation with someone the other day about why it’s easier to learn music than to learn lines of dialogue, and I realized that I’ve leaned songs in two ways: by letting them play in the background over and over, and my singing along the best I could every time I listened to them. They both work, but I was wondering which worked better, if any.
KQ2: Is one method of producing knowledge inherently better than another, or do they work better in different situations and/or for different people? Can they be used simultaneously?
This prescribed title provides the argument that passive observation and active experiment are the only possible ways for humans to produce new knowledge. Both observation and experiment are significant steps in the scientific method and are thus integral to producing new understandings within the natural world. I believe that each way of knowing plays a key role in helping us to produce new knowledge but only through the two methods proposed with this prescribed title. I think this title is asking the reader to explore the ways he/she produces knowledge to discover if the two ways presented are the only ways or if there are other methods that humankind can use to produce knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAoK: Human sciences
KQ #1: In what ways can the media encourage or influence certain behavior in its viewers?
RLS: Every time I watch television and view violence, aggression and negativity towards others, whether faux or not, I think the same thing over and over. The more violence and negative activity demonstrated by actors in movies or crazy people on reality tv, the more aggression generations who constantly watch this will have. Personally, I believe the behavior portrayed in the media, especially on television, influences and encourages the people who observe the circumstances to take part in the same activities, good or bad. American Psychological Association has a website with a page titled “Psychologists Study Media Violence for Harmful Effects.” It turns out that I am not the only one who believes that televised violence has effects on the viewers. Additionally, there was research done by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann, Leonard Eron and others starting in the 1980s that focused on observing children into their adulthood. The results led the psychologists to conclude that young children in grade school who watched hours upon hours of violence on television showed more aggressive behavior in their teenage years.
Here’s the link if you are interested in reading the page: http://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/protect.aspx
KQ #2: How can one's lack of faith in another's active experimentation prove to be a detour for the person trying to produce new knowledge?
This past weekend I spent my time with family at a cottage on a lake. Paradise is what I should call it but that's besides the point. My grandparents have a really dirty, old boat. They bought some magic erasers to clean the dirt off the boat that has been there for a great while. They used them and then said they worked just like magic. Something prompted to me to believe that they couldn't work considering what they looked like. Therefore I couldn't really figure out if they worked or not without trying to use them for myself. My lack of faith in my family's attempts to clean with the magic erasers made me take a detour so to speak and find a way to see if they worked. Hence the explanation for me trying them myself. Moral of the story, I tried them and they worked really well so I ended up cleaning the whole boat and received a free ice cream for my efforts. Lack of faith may come in handy sometimes.
I agree that knowledge can only be produced through passive observation or through active experiment. At first I disagreed with this statement because I thought that experimentation could be passive, especially if it is accidental, and observation could be active. However, I realized that all observation is passive and all experimentation is active because observation implies seeing and eventually understanding what has already been discovered whereas experimentation implies discovering, whether accidentally or not. This suggests that whatever information we have produced it is either discovered experimentally or is understood from observing known information.
ReplyDeleteArea of knowledge: Human Sciences
Knowledge Question 1: How can language paired with active experimentation aid the understanding of new knowledge?
Situation 1: A few days ago I was playing a round of cornhole with my family and friends of ours. My team and I were losing badly and not only was I unable to aim the bags I had to throw properly in the direction of the board that I was aiming at, but I also could not reach the board with my throws. My mom kept saying to me that I needed to arc the bag that I was throwing in order to reach the board. After watching my opponents throw their bags successfully I was eventually able to succeed in reaching the board with my bags. Although my team and I did not win the cornhole game I realized how I could excel within the game. In this situation, both active experimentation and passive observation played a role in my realization of how to better my throwing abilities. From passive observation I listened to the advice my mom had given me and applied it to observing my opponents that were successful. This allowed me to understand what I needed to do but not necessarily how. After experimenting with my throw with the goal that my observation had shaped for me, I was able to be successful in my throws and better understand how that knowledge applied to me. Through passive observation I was able to understand information already discovered by my mom and opponents and through active experimentations with my throws I was able to discover how that knowledge applied to me.
Knowledge Question 2: To what extent is active experimentation more reliable than passive observation?
ReplyDeleteSituation 2: At the ice cream and fudge shop that I work at there has recently been a discussion among my peers and boss as to whether the new tip jar we have been using attracts more tips than our previous tip jar. From receiving less tips recently than when the shop used our old tip jar, I stated that the tip jar did not attract more tips because customers could not see that there were tips in the jar. I have heard that people generally tip more when they can see that previous customers have tipped because they feel obligated to do so. With our new tip jar, customers cannot see if others have tipped, and therefore I believed that was why this tip jar did not work as well. From this idea, my boss and peers decided that we would conduct our own experiment and test my theory. They day I worked, we kept the cover off of the tip jar so customers could see the tips, and the next day we kept the cover on. I noticed that when the cover was off, I received more tips than I usually did by the end of my shift, and the employees that worked the day with the tip jar cover on reaped less tips than the day that I worked with the cover off. Through active experimentation my colleagues and I realized that my tip jar theory was correct, however it came to our attention that we tested this theory on two different days of the week in which the flow of customers is not the same. As we thought about this, we discovered more and more situations that could potentially skew our tip jar experiment results. This meant that our active experiment was not reliable although we experienced this tip jar theory firsthand. However, the original tip jar theory that I had observed included errors similar and therefore our active experimentation was just as reliable as passively observing the theory that I had presented to my peers.
There are several key words in the prompt that aid in narrowing its scope. For example, by using produce knowledge it is made clear that we are not considering knowledge already discovered, only an original thought. By focusing on humans we exclude other ways of knowing or creating knowledge that other animals may experience but we do not. On one hand, I am wary of the use of “only” in the prompt as rhetoric classes with P.B. have urged to be wary of absolutes. On the other hand, I cannot think of a third way to produce knowledge that would prove this wrong, off the top of my head. In my opinion, the prompt is asking if the knowers believes that there are other ways of generating knowledge or if there should be others. The absolution of the prompt makes me want to be able to prove it wrong, yet these seem to be the two main ways of producing knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAoK: Ethics
1st RLS: The other day I was walking with a close friend of mine when I met someone who I did not know as well. While I was talking to the second person, he reached out and held by arm. It was not a threatening gesture at all, but I realized that it made me feel slightly uncomfortable. I realized that I was less comfortable with physical contact that I previously though. Although this is personal knowledge, I discovered it through passive observation.
2nd RLS: While I was in New Jersey, I went to visit my uncle with my brother. All my older siblings address him by his full name without issue. Yet, my younger sister and I always call him Uncle *insert name here.* So I decided to test my luck and as soon as my brother greeted him by his full name, I repeated the greeting. And of course I was shut down immediately. However, through active experiment I learned which behavior was allowed and expected of me.
1st KQ: Do the facts of knowledge exist even if they have not entered anyone’s conscience thought? Can it be produced if it already exists?
I suppose a simple way to get around this is to clarify in the prompt, “humankind can realize new knowledge.” Yet as it stands it is very human-centric. Whether or not anyone realized or produced the knowledge of how gravity works did not affect the fact that it was still there. In the same vein, my being uncomfortable with physical contact with some people was already a fact before I thought about it consciously. However, by having the knowledge that I should not greet my uncle informally, it does affect future situations.
2nd KQ: If the aforementioned prompt is true, then to what extent is the credibility of knowledge gained through intuition decreased?
If knowledge is truly produced only through active experiment and passive observation then what about knowledge gained through intuition? Are the things that people know just because mere imagination or does it debunk the prompt? Is intuition just a correct guess? If, intuition was able to stand as another way of producing knowledge then I should have intuitively known the answers to my RLS. Similarly, if intuition does produce knowledge then does observation and experiment only serve as supporting evidence? Holding observation and experiment as the only two ways of creating new knowledge means that intuitional knowledge is debunked. It also means that knowledge is only produced when backed up by somethings gained through sense perception.
I spent a long time mulling over the statement and came to the conclusion that I generally agree with it, but I am not sure if something so vast can be simply put into two categories. Observing and doing give humans the tools to analyze and produce knowledge and it is a combination of those that produces most knowledge. At, first, I could not figure out if I agreed with this statement because I saw reflection and imagination as separate ways to produce knowledge, but ultimately put them into the category of active experiment because they can be seen as actively seeking knowledge. There is also instinct and intuition but those usually kick in due to passive observation. This is why I mostly agree with the statement.
ReplyDeleteAOK: Human Sciences
KQ 1: To what extent can active experiment and passive observation be intertwined in order to produce knowledge?
RLS 1: When I was younger, during one summer, my parents put me in a camp called Vraj camp in which we had to wake up early in the morning to do yoga and hike to pray at an Indian temple before eating breakfast. Me, being a heavy sleeper, not very religious, and extremely hungry in the morning, absolutely hated this routine. However, there was one thing that sparked my interest. There was one counselor who would give a chocolate bar to every student who memorized this certain prayer. Now, this wasn't just any chocolate bar. It was a jumbo king-sized hershey chocolate bar that I needed to have. The prayer was around 5 pages and in a language that I could barely understand so memorizing it was out of the question. Instead, through passive observation, I realized that the counselor was very impatient and easily frustrated when things were slow. Then, through active experiment, I asked the counselor very long, boring questions in a roundabout fashion and noticed that she would stop listening or just answer without hearing the full question. This combination of observation and experiment led me to produce the knowledge that I could get the chocolate bar by memorizing just two lines of the prayer. So that is what I did and when she asked me to recite it, I said the words very slowly and drrreeewww thheeemmm oooouuuuttt for as long as I could. This caused the counselor to become impatient and snap at me to go faster. When I told her that I couldn't and that it was too hard to recite it faster, she told me that she believed I knew the prayer and handed me the chocolate. In this case, a combination of observation and experiment allowed me to produce the knowledge which helped me attain my goal.
KQ 2: In what ways can an intuition be a result of passive observation?
RLS 2: There was one time when I was sitting in the airport at the gate waiting to board my plane and a random man decided to sit right next to me. Instantly, I felt that something was wrong. The man looked harmless, but my intuition told me that something was off. So, even though I was alone, I politely told the man that my father was sitting in that seat and if he could move. Instead of moving like a normal human being, he started questioning me about where my father was and refused to move until my father came. When I asked him why, he said that he believed that I was alone and wanted to get to know me better. Then he tried to grab my hand and started asking me a bunch of questions about my life and family. Obviously, at this point I was terrified because this man was a lot older than me and looked a lot stronger than me. So, I did the only thing that I could think of and shouted at him that if he did not move to the other side of the airport in 5 seconds, I would start screaming at the top of my lungs. This caused him to quickly leave. After this incident, I thought a lot about what caused my instincts to kick in at tell me that there was danger and I came to the conclusion that it was through the passive observations that most of the other seats at the gate were empty and yet he had chosen to sit next to me, that he was bigger and stronger than me, and that he had a generally creepy expression.
Aok: history
ReplyDeleteRLS #1: I was at a leadership conference in DC based around national security and we were being lectured to by a guest speaker, Ms. O'Sullivan, the director of the office of national intelligence. We were seated in an auditorium facing her as she spoke. Unfortunately, I cannot recall one detail of what she was talking about.
RLS #2: Later in the week we participated in simulations where we were members of the national security council solving a crisis. Since the simulations, I believe I can now say I am have a better idea of how the government works and of what Ms. O'Sullivan does.
KQ #1: Do emotions influence the memory when one is trying to learn something?
In the case of the two real life situations, I found the speaker to be rather boring and so I did not learn from her very much. I actually spent a good chunk of her presentation time trying not to fall asleep. Therefore, in the first real life situation my emotions negatively influenced my ability to remember what she was trying to show us. In the second situation, I enjoyed the hands on activity that gave me a inside look at our government and how it functions. I think that because I was enjoying the activity, I may better remember as a result.
KQ #2: To what extent is sense perception the best way to learn?
In the two cases above, I found that I learned better when I was using sense perception. When I was doing a hands-on activity, I was using my reasoning, and that is how I learn best. When I was being a passive learner, I did not learn very much because I wasn't doing very much and I wasn't using my sense perception. So in the case as above, sense perception was to a large extent the best way for me to learn.
Ah, the beauty of a late TOK post. I apologize for my complete inability to sense the passage of time.
ReplyDelete'There are only two ways in which humankind can produce knowledge: through passive observation or through active experiment.'
The verb 'produce' here narrows the scope of the statement. This refers to original ideas. I interpret the phrase "passive observation" as observation of an event or series of actions which someone else is performing. When I watch other people write their ToK posts in order to lear how ToK posts are written, I'm observing passively and then extrapolating my own knowledge from it. However, even when I observe passively, I must synthesize my own ideas in order to produce new knowledge. Given that I, the knower, am the one synthesizing the idea, the synthesis of the idea is an action and is, hence, active. I don't see a way that the creation of new knowledge could be purely passive, as it must derive from my thinking of it. Active experimentation comes solely from the notion of experimenting with a new thought or idea. For instance, I watch Sio write a ToK post, read her ideas on the subject, and then think to myself "well, what if the ToK post addressed the human sciences rather than ethics?" I haven't actually written a ToK post on the human sciences, but I have now actively produced new knowledge. Hence, the very production of knowledge is active-- there is no way to produce new knowledge solely through passive observation. However, there is something to be said for the amount of prior information one has before synthesizing new knowledge-- for interest, if I see someone say "ew" after tasting a food, I have less information than I would if I had read 5 Yelp reviews on the restaurant which served the food. Information synthesized solely on the work of others (me reading the results of surveys rather than conducting surveys) is much closer to passive observation than active experimentation.
AoK: human sciences
RLS 1: As a social psychology intern, I read a lot of articles on various studies conducted which tell us things about the ways people think about climate change, immigration, and other real world issues. In one of the articles I read, the writers showed in their Methods section that they had only surveyed college students for one of their tests on immigration. I began to wonder: why did they only survey college students? How would the results have been different if they had surveyed adults or young children? I hypothesized that adults would have shown a more conservative response, whereas children would have fewer preconceived notions, and would most likely be more lenient towards illegal immigrants.
KQ 1: To what extent does memory bias a knower's opinions on new situations?
A knower who had passively observed other's reactions to illegal immigrants would most likely base their own knowledge on what they had observed, whereas a knower with little to no memory of others' reactions to illegal immigrants, such as a young child, would most likely form their own opinion in a different way. I also have preconceived notions of the reactions of adults and children, and based my own hypothesis off of passively observed information.
RLS 2: As a psychology intern, I am currently one of three people writing and formatting a survey on public opinions on Bangladeshi migrants into India due to climate change. As soon as the ethics committee gets back to our team, the survey will be put up online for American and Indian participants to take. We will then analyze their reactions to the questions we asked and synthesize some possible implications of this data. The variable we manipulate is whether or not survey participants see a short article on climate change at the start of the survey. (Participants who don't see that article get an article which just details the Bangladeshi immigrant situation.) Hence, we are actively experimenting on participants in order to see the outcome.
DeleteKQ 2: How can the language of a question affect a knower's answer?
When I ask, "Why are Indians so mean to Bangladeshi immigrants?", it is stated in the question that Indians are mean to Bangladeshi immigrants, and I may be creating a bias in the way the participant answers. If I say "How do you believe Bangladeshi immigrants are treated in India?", the question is more neutrally worded and the participant's answer is based more on their prior knowledge than on the wording of my question. Manipulating the language of the question is active experimentation with the participant's answer, and hence I as the researcher may have different results which I can analyze. Language can create bias because the participant believes that the researcher wants them to answer a certain way or within certain constraints. Neutral questions help to reduce this factor.
When I set about deconstructing this prescribed title, I had to grapple with three components: the meaning of "producing" knowledge, "passive observation", and "active experimentation". I interpret "producing" knowledge to mean the process of generating and synthesizing ideas that are original to a knower. Passive observation entails standing by and absorbing information, whereas active experimentation entails some variety of exploration and research in order to seek information. The fundamental difference between the two is that passive observation occurs when an individual allows knowledge to surface as it comes, whereas in active experimentation people involve themselves fully in procedures and they become directly responsible for producing new knowledge in their time. A good metaphor to use is the difference between being an audience member in a show (passive observation) versus being a performer in a show (active experimentation.) However, the term passive observation has one caveat: under my definition of "producing" knowledge, a component of synthesizing original information is required. Passive observation enables an individual to receive knowledge that already exists; it has merely been transmitted. Yet in order to comprehend and produce further knowledge from that observation, an element of active mental processing and comprehension must be involved. I therefore believe that all situations wherein knowledge is produced can be boiled down and categorized under the blanket terms of "active observation"or "active experimentation
ReplyDeleteAoK: the Arts.
ReplyDeleteRLS 1: I took three weeks of ballet classes wherein and my instructor taught us how the human anatomy functions using spirals in order to maintain proper alignment. While I clearly understood the concepts she spoke of when she explained and demonstrated using a model human skeleton, when it came time to perform the ballet exercises I found it difficult to physically apply the concepts to my own body.
RLS 2: One of the musicians in the dance festival I attended used an electronic synthesizer as his instrument of choice, and whenever he played I noticed one peculiar deep vibrating note he would repeat as an undercurrent throughout his whole composition. I asked him how and where on his instrument the sound was produced, and after our conversation each time he played that particular note I would immediately visualize the button he hit and a combination of 1s and 0s squiggling through his computer system in order to emit the sound.
KQ 1: To what extent are active observation and active experimentation necessary to each other in order for an individual to produce new knowledge?
In RLS 1, I had to utilize both active observation (listening to my teacher) and active experimentation (working out her concepts for myself) in order to fully produce new knowledge in the form of movement on my body. As I was constantly reminded, a dancer's most important job is to take the information a teacher gives them and evaluate and explore their own body in order to apply given concepts. The teacher can explain and demonstrate and point out mistakes, but they cannot live in my body and fix my body for me. I am most responsible for transforming active observation into active experimentation so that I can understand and generate proper technique. In RLS 2, active experimentation was not a necessary component in order for me to understand and produce knowledge that was new in my mind. I only had to employ active observation in the form of picking up on the tune of the music and listening to the musician explain his instrument in order to develop a keen visual knowledge of the way music is produced. Thus, active experimentation is not inherently necessary to active observation in order to produce new knowledge, but often can be.
KQ 2: How do the combination of language and sense perception help us understand knowledge garnered through active observation?
In my RLS 1 and 2, my sense perception skills were necessary in order to hear, see, feel, and communicate the language that provided me a deeper understanding of my observations. In my ballet classes, I was listening to what my teacher was saying and watching her as she manipulated a model skeleton, employing hearing and sight. However, beyond that I had to use feelings within my muscles in order to express the proper alignment on my body, which is essentially communicating a form of language - body language. I had to take what the teacher was communicating to me verbally and translate it physically, which required the combined effort of sense perception. In RLS 2, without using sense-perception to hear the note emitted from the synthesizer, I might never had gained the knowledge of how the machine functioned and thus I would not have produced my mental image whenever the note was played. In order to produce further knowledge from my initial observations, I had to use language to ask the musician to explain how his instrument functioned, which aided my understanding.