Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma Fourth Edition: Hodder Education Group

Teachers: just read the TOK guide; the outline for this text is there, and when it comes to the substance, there are simply better resources out there.

The whole subject matter of this book can be explained by the following ideas:- There is a world outside of us, it is knowable.- We can describe this world by making 'claims' about it.- This claims can be 'true', not 'certain' or 'false'.- We call claims true if they accurately describe the world. We call these claims 'factual' or 'knowledge'.- Accurate description means that things are the way we say they are. We know that from sensual perception.- Everything that falls short of knowledge is called belief or opinion. We should not argue about them.- We're born into the world of knowledge - a lot of it was discovered, tested and agreed hundreds of years ago. We should be respectfull to the work done by other people.- We should aknowledge that we are accepting million facts without challenging them just because we had them in school. There was some "implicit trust" to authority.- There are communities of knowers in different spheres - sciences, history. They are doing a lot of work to find and justify knowledge. We should be respectfull to them and consider what they say.- We should aknowledge that all the knowledge we have about stuff is mostly formed due to unconsious process as part of our development and community in which we live. We should therefore not think of it as the absolute truth and check with how world really is.- When forming a belief about natural world and history it is good to consult to those communities of knowers.- Criterias to be true - in math it is a rigorous proof, in science it is scientific method, in history it is historical method.- There is a different levels of certainty achievable in each area of knowledge. We should appreciate that and not be chauvinistic.

Useful but expensive