ToK Journal 2016-2018

  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 ...

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...