ToK Journal 2016-2018

Recently, I came across the article about peer review in natural sciences. And what intrigued me the most was the information that two-thirds of researchers, nowadays, failed at reproducing another scientist’s experiment. That shocked me. And as I was thinking about this problem a few issues arose. Firstly, as I read in the article, the problem of reproducibility is the result of modern want of big breakthroughs. News, TV, and the Internet constantly expect scientists to bring to them new and shocking scientific theories. Even as a global society we are used to quick and new solutions (because of the Internet culture-we do not have to wait long for the answer, we can have it in a second ). Therefore, scientists are always in a hurry and they want to discover or invent more rapidly and bring new, better solutions to our current biggest problems. And because of the short time in which scientists are expected to bring the results of their work, they make mistakes. It seems like a p...

Last week I was going back home with two of my brothers and my dad from the family trip. As we were talking, suddenly I realized that my little brother, who is now seven, kept asking many questions and when my other brother or I answered to his question he still waited for my father's answer. Firstly I thought that it might be because our dad is his role model and then he believes that my father has greater knowledge so  naturally he is more likely than me to answer correctly. This got me thinking about experts. In this situation, my dad was an expert and my little brother-a person which desired knowledge. We can observe that in media, especially tv news or in newspapers, when analyzing a global, political or any other issue mostly the experts occur and provide not also the historical facts and scientific theories, but also their point of view. Of course in the ideal world, when each person thinks critically and independently, he or she can create their own opinion by looking for ...

    But really, am I? On my last ToK classes we are discussing a lot about the language. How language affects our world's view and our beliefs, the problems with translations and meaning of the words ect. So as I heard about those obstacles and problems that language is, I started wondering (because on my classes we also talked about different languages and untranslatable words) about limitations that I have because of speaking my native language. Is my mother's tongue a set of beliefs and emotions of my forefathers? Because the language I am using now, was once invented and words were made up to express certain feelings and needs. Of course it is always changing and current society is adapting the language to its needs. However, the past can still affect language. For example, if the country was once full of farmers, then in the language may exist more farmer's words in comparison to, for example, to country in which the majority of citizens work as miners. 

Some time ago my friend told me this short story: I was going time from school by bus. That day I felt a bit annoyed because I forgot to take my headphones and my way back home looks as if it's going to be quite long because of the traffic in the city. So I sat be the window next to a group of teens. Sitting next to them I heart their school stories, what they did today at school and so on. You might think that it is just a normal, everyday situation, but I started to think: Well, I go back go by bus every day for past 6 six or so. However, I cannot remember listening that kind of conversations were I was 9. I remember talking and hearing about some children TV shows or new toys someone received. Does it mean that I did not hear conversations about more teen issues just because I was not a teen or I wasn't interested in that topics?   My friend is also an IB student so we started to think and discuss this question. From the previous question the knowledge question arose Can...

  Language is vague. We might want to say in Spanish that we love someone we say te quiero we also mean I choose you . Many other examples of ambiguity of language may be risen form different languages which prove that every language is vague. One world can mean two different things and it can cause discord between people. As we know, language is based on generalisations. We know how the table should look like so we name nearly any wooden object with four legs a table.  Generalisations make our lives easier, so we do not need to say that we see a wooden thing with four wooden legs, we simply assume that it is a table. Thus on the one hand generalisations facilitates humans' communication but on the other hand it can make it more difficult and cause discord. From this assumption the question may arise: To what extend generalisations are helpful and when they are simply obstacles? Obviously, we would not be able to function in every-day life with simple generalisations of ...

 Can we see what a bare human eye cannot see? We may say that we do it right now, but in reality we don't. If a bare human eye can't see a particular thing then scientists and engineers cooperate to invent a technology that will enable humans to do so. Miroscopes, telescopes- they were produced to enable humans to see what is not possible to be seen for a human eye. But is it possible for humans to gain knowledge in sciences when they cannot actually see a phenomenon?  There are scientists that claim a possible knowledge claims without actually seeing a phenomenon, however, it is never called a fact. Even apart from sciences, in every day life people usually do not believe if they have not seen that. For example, 2 weeks ago when the US elections ended I was at school and my friend told me that Donald Trump won the elections. I could not believe that. Even though I knew he was a strong candidate, but the media that I was surrounded, social media, celebrities talk...

 Since I was little I always loved sci-fi movies. Expolring the universe and interstellar journeys fascinates me even right now. Recently, I've been particularly interested in the first human journey to Mars. right now NASA with cooperation with other international companies are testing new rockets and technology that would be able to take men kind to Mars in the near future. I watched plenty of documentaries and conferences about the obstacles that right now unables NASA to complete this mission. 2 particularly interesting videos about sending humans to Mars which made me think about this issue   As I was watching I thought a lot about the obstacles that scientists need to overcome in order to send humans to Mars. Of course the cause of these obstacles is our current knowledge which unables scientists to produce more technologically developed devices.  But what is really an obstacle? Is it our knowledge or is it the important materials which do not exist?...

On last week's ToK classes we were discussing ways of knowing. What interested me the most was language. Language is a way of passing on information, knowledge but also our thought and beliefs to other people. We can ''implant'' our thought into somebody's mind. (as Mark Pagel said in this TED Talk: Language in terms of acquiring knowledge is powerful. Without it we wouldn't be able to learn as quickly as we do it now. School, universities but also other people use language as a main tool to teach others. However, this powerful tool not only can help us acquire knowledge so can the language influence our lives? Because we are constantly surround with words and various language structures, people often use them to influence others. To by using emotional language create an image in somebody's mind that will help convince this person that something is either right or wrong. We often see it in political, religious and controversial speeches. So if ot...

   Lately because (of course) my ToK classes I've been thinking a lot about personal knowledge. But specifically about peer pressure.      However, what interested me more was how we tend to adjust not only your knowledge as opinions and thoughts, but also your knowledge about ourselves. About who we are, what we are like, what we want to do and what we hate to do. Because it is easier to agree on one thing rather than argue and discuss about it, we prefer to quickly change our minds and do not dive into the topic that is, maybe uncomfortable or tabu for us. Of course, there are lots of great people who are stubborn (but in a good way) and have strong, convincing arguments.   As I was thinking about it more and more I suddenly recalled the video that I watched maybe a year ago. It was about introversion (video below). Maybe at first look it doesn't seem to do much with knowledge and gaining it, but as I thought about this topic deeper, I understood tha...

   Imagine you are at the party with your friends. It's great, you all are having a great time, but a couple days after, you and your friends want to describe what happened there to a friends of yours who didn't have the opportunity to go there. As the friends are recalling the event you realize that those descriptions differ from each other and maybe especially from yours? Is that situation sounds familiar to you?    It happened to me countless numbers of times! For example, yesterday when I was talking casually about our last family trip to Italy with my brother. We were chatting how great and exciting it was, when suddenly I cought myself thinking from time to time it wasn't like that or this person said something else ect. Our memories distinguished sometimes so much that it made me think about it. Are my memories diffrient because I forgot some details or maybe my experiences fade with time? Maybe overshadowing my memories occured?  Are overshadowe...

This week I have been thinking a lot about determining whether the knowlege claim is raeasonable and how we examine those claims. From the ToK classes I now know that here are two criteria: evidence and coherence.  The second one for me is the most interesting. I've become more interested in how scientists made some breakthroughs. Where their evidence coherent with what they already knew? Maybe some new knowledge claims are true and break our false perception of things but are not coherent with our current knowledge? Is it possible to examine that? Is it possible to knowledge claim not be coherent or having an evidence that humans cannot understand? I'm wondering if people can go beyond their confirmation bias and see world in a whole new way. I belive that by leaving some cultural biases and maybe even current reasonable knowlege can help us see things that are not in our access right now because of how we think things are. Of course in this case we cannot accept all t...

This week (12-18.09) I started my ToK classes. We've studied problems of knowlege and the example of the maps and how our culture influence our perception of the world. Europeans see Europe in the center of Earth when at the same time an American can be use to maps that show America in the centre. The Earth is a spheare so we cannot really say what is truerly ''in the center''. This idea really hit me. I started thinking how much our culture influence on our knowledge? Is a culture sometimes a part o knowledge? Map used before discovering America. Another thing that intriceted me was an idea or maybe a statement, that knowledge is simplified. Bringing back the maps example: of course it is not possible for us to create real 1:1 map of the world- firstly, that kind of map it is simply not possible to make and secondly, it would be completly useless for us. So for the usefulness of the maps they are simplified. And the same is with many other areas of...