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...

 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...