TOK essay examples

Here are a few TOK essay examples from the previous TOK essay examples 2020 batch

TOK ESSAY

“Accepting knowledge claims always involves an element of trust.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge.

A knowledge claim is something that we are sure about, and therefore, we believe it to be true. Since truth is subjective, its veracity can be questioned. Hence, the acceptance of a knowledge claim requires reliable sources that are mutually considered trustworthy.

Trust is the willingness to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations about another’s behavior.^[1] It is essentially a brain function that begins right from the time of birth.^[2] We are far more likely to trust something similar to us in some dimensions. The greater the similarity, the stronger the trust grows.

Trusting knowledge claims requires a conscious awareness of domain knowledge and a broad range of unobstructed cognitive progression. It involves using invisible filters and lenses formed based on our experiences, including ways of knowing.

The acceptance of knowledge claims may have varying degrees as ‘sometimes’ the element of trust may be weak or partially eroded during the acceptance. Hence, the word ‘always’ is debatable. In general, acceptance is a multidimensional approach as it may be out of sheer willingness, authority, evidence, bias, and situations.

The connection between acceptance and trust is not ‘always’ strong because trust develops with time, experiences, relationships, and visibility seen in practice but not invariably mentally interpreted. Therefore, it is cognizant to dissect the acceptance and trust in AOKs, like history and human science, to frame an argument for and against the title.

To what extent is it possible to establish the truth about the past?

Different memories express the result of a person’s trajectory throughout their lives. Memory collectively aggregates many events, facts, and objects with individual witnesses and experiences.

However, in isolation, the individual is considered the product of social interactions and an essential source to form claims in history (personal knowledge). However, the general notion of memory being an active and accurate contributor to knowledge claims in history cannot be applied to particular cases.

The personal experiences of the narrator also contribute to the field research. For instance, the details about the second Punic war can be best taken from military events accounted for by Polybius, including his interviews with major commanders and visits to some of the battlefields.^[3] He commanded greek troops and fought the Achaean War. Polybius’s narration is viewed with accuracy pertaining to roman warfare and an accomplished military eye.

The first-hand information, experiences play an active role to make Polybius’s work trustworthy. However, memory is often blamed to have selective attention and partial retrieval.^[4] Therefore the impressions created could insufficiently focus only on what the mind has captured. And it is possible to forget and misremember something too.

Additionally, ‘Mein Kampf”, written by Adolf Hitler, has been a victim of social bias as it reflects the interest of one social group, perhaps one individual. ‘Mein Kampf’ focuses on Hitler’s plans to transform German society through expansion, including his discussions on anti-semitic worldview, leading to social unrest.^[5] Its hateful language and concepts may propel painful memories, especially in Germany.^[6]

However, to trust such claims, one must study the author and his psychological approach before forming perceptions that it is a dangerous book.^[7] Langage is capable of being dissected and accused of its intention. Moreover, the meanings due to denotation theory are exposed to several interpretations. It is believed that Hitler’s aggressive words were then and now capable of inducing violence, and therefore, the book is banned since World WAR II.

Knowledge claims in history possess greater elements of trust if they are collective evidence from past eras, including cemeteries, the founding of museums, collections, etc.^[8] Nora (1980) professed that historical events are perceived as transitory, and history does correspond to the time period that characterizes movements and recollections transmitted from one generation to another.

Nora rejected individual memories as documentary sources and claimed that collective memory (shared knowledge) is far more reliable evidence to make claims about the past in history trustworthy.^[9]

However, the investigation into the historical inquiry has often been disputed because the historical explanations have their own logic and rely on deductive models. Sometimes, the lack of appropriate strategies and evidence for historical inquiries forces us to depend on it, thereby misleading historical explanations. It is believed and often criticized that most authors and publishers designed the story to be told and hide something of no interest.

The element of trust is furthermore unconvincing when knowledge claims about greek and roman military history are studied. While languages are rule-governed and intended, the rational explanations and reporting of events by Greeks largely remain unreliable, biased, incomplete, or even false.^[10] Questionable arguments have often been raised on the factual accounting of events misreported.

For instance, Anuja Chandramowuli, in her book on Tuglaq, depicts Tughlaq as a cruel ruler who violates religious policies and a war aspirant. Unfortunately, the author has used her imagination to fill in the information gaps and makes the reader unaware and deprived of Tughlaq’s victories, personality, challenges, and overall life.

The author referred to multiple sources to connect the dots about Tughlaq’s life, supposedly a hit-and-run strategy to morph the humanness and vulnerabilities that convey different knowledge claims.^[11] Her audience has accepted the same due to the concept of mass acceptance, where the element of trust does not lie in her claims. Her book misses the collective approach that a historian adopts to help people accept claims in history and eventually trust them.

While trust in history has been a matter of concern due to memory and language, it is pragmatic to explore the extent to which trust in knowledge claims in human science can be established through emotions and reasoning. Trust is essential to survive. Human beings are naturally predisposed to trust. The tendency to trust made sense in our evolutionary history.

Should emotions be accepted as evidence to establish claims?

Emotions are well-known governing tools to make judgments. They resemble judgments as most judgments involve trust influenced by feelings. The harsh judgment of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was considered a necessary act for the greater good but also unfortunate^[12]. 85% of Americans approved of it during a poll in 1945, however, by 2015, the share of Americans trusting the decision of nuclear weapons was believed unjustified as only 56% approved.^[13]

Most humans demonstrate social emotions through which the element of trust is formed. However, in Truman’s case, the American President did not show any regret, even if he felt any^[14]. However, other sources claim that his decision to stop any further bombing after the Hiroshima-Nagasaki incident hints the same.^[15]

Emotions like regret, social pressure, and disgust sometimes assist us to reflect and trust our own decisions who we sometimes claim to be correct. Probably, a poll may have been conducted to imply personal thoughts versus shared opinions to gather a wider insight about reactions.

Considering, Japanese aggression during WWII, the decision of bombing seemed trustworthy because it was unlikely for them to surrender.^[16] It is claimed that Nuclear bombing stopped WWII for good and prevented subsequent deaths from a protracted conflict.^[17] Many trust this claim through logical reasoning and Utilitarian argument. It arguably discouraged the descent into nuclear war for the rest of the 20th Century.

Japanese philosopher Masahiro Morioka made connections between the utilitarian argument and bombings.^[18] While, it was shocking to see that, both the situations had common ethical judgments of saving more lives to sacrifice few lives, what remains emotionally wrong is the inconsideration of the killed victims and their perspectives.

Trusting your own decision in such critical conditions may not be accurate. The implicit theories in psychology have often provided evidence about how we quickly trust our implicit personality.^[19] However, research claims that such judgments are self-overrated due to one’s feeling of safety and security. Though, our likely tendency to recall information and subsequent trustworthiness places us in a vulnerable situation.

Not only this, we rely on third-party verification to trust the character of another person. Such transitive trust, according to Bernie Madoff, cultivates a false sense of security and jeopardizes social trust in general.^[20]

Trusting a knowledge claim requires paying more attention and over-weighing evidence. This creates a worst-case scenario when people think that their judgment is better than the average, unfortunately, contributing to errors, and trusting claims about ‘trust in humans’ has been considered risky.^[21]

Undoubtedly, trust is an essential ingredient in accepting widely profound claims. Accepting disseminating knowledge must have the fundamental importance of a claim; however, philosophical disagreements may often constrain our horizon of comprehension. Such disagreements present a range of theoretical arguments, competence, evidence gathered, and, above all, expectations and beliefs in denying a claim.

If one cannot trust the source, then everything built on it is untrue. Trusting memory to accept knowledge claims in history has been questioned due to its subjective nature and the weak deductive approach. However, the narrator’s personal experience has been considered a valuable and trustworthy element for historical claims.

Few exceptions can be drawn here because of the perception of the author and the topic of discussion from society’s viewpoint. Incidentally, individual memory is very often rejected and considered trustworthy rarely while collective memory is considered credible. However, claims which are dated back and have little evidence for their occurrence remain questionable due to the mercy of the author’s approach.

Whereas, in Human Sciences, it is witnessed that trust shifts and changes due to the changes in social emotion and time. On certain ethical grounds, accepting knowledge claims, especially in psychology, remains trustworthy. However, implicit theory reveals that we often accept and trust situations through confirmation bias leading to poor judgments. Trust in human science is more widely proclaimed through emotions than anything else.

Overall, accepting knowledge claims does not ‘always’ involve trust but ‘sometimes. It is the WOKs that have the power to generate varying degrees of trust in different AOKs.

TOK ESSAY

“Areas of knowledge are most useful in combination with each other.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge.

Plato defined knowledge as ‘justified true belief’ however, the meaning of knowledge must not be restrained within the boundary of contextual language. Knowledge is interwired and its connections act as subdomains to serve the purpose, within the domain and outside its academic boundary.

Knowledge is conspicuous in different areas of knowledge. This problematic commodity brings along a lot of perspectives, meanings, values, and limitations. Therefore, establishing certainty to reach the best of the utility, we often aggregate concepts in different contexts to reach understanding. Having knowledge of different areas certainly does aid the process and its usefulness.

A strong grasp of concepts of chemistry is required to treat an ailing condition in the human body. While the study of Psychology can have an added value in not just dealing with the body but a healthy mind too. It is often required to trespass into different AOKs in order to understand the scheme of things better as a combination. Therefore for a medical practitioner knowledge of human and natural science can provide a shallow insight.

When areas of knowledge are used in combination with one another, it assists in connecting the dots to arrive at an accurate picture, not always but sometimes. This is evaluated through art and history by answering, ‘Do imagination and emotions help in constructing an accurate picture of the past? ‘

Students’ historical hunger is satisfied through powerful resources of art that feed thinking and engagement about history. What we know about the past could be the myths and facts, therefore art is capable of acknowledging both to some extent.

History has always been focused on featuring human conditions and the only way to believe and experience those conditions is to rely on limited sources as evidence. Some might argue that memory helps in reconstructing our knowledge of the past, while others agree that art assists history through creative imagination.

No other discipline is more inherently interdisciplinary than art and history. In various ways, the different facets of art speak about history. By looking at the artwork’s style, color, and symbolism, we can learn about the culture that produced it, signifying the historical cognizance.

From a play that shows the rise of a culture to a piece of the architectural masterpiece that holds various puzzles about the past, art is a vital part of societies’ attempt to understand history^[22].

Art exhibits important meanings about historical ways of life’s hardships, experiences, or just practices enjoyed through literature which often represents incidences to influence society at large. Art makes a significant impact on future generations to get an idea of what life was.

Art has profoundly demonstrated progress and change in societal values, the standard of living and therefore without these, history would just have been simple tales written as texts passed down through generations.

Art is a thoughtful product that generates not only emotive aestheticism but also solves the purpose of academic excellence. Its cognitive element is usually considered significant in recreating the evidence about the events of the past.

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica depicts the massacre of a Basque village in 1937^[23]. Picasso’s creative imagination gave a visual response and a token of the memorial after receiving the first-hand information as he used black and white colors to have a funeral appeal. The innovative use of flat, Picasso-styled figures is effective in portraying some kind of fighting or terror evoking emotions of fear and empathy too.^[24]

Picasso’s quest for knowledge about the unfortunate event resulted in using both primary and secondary emotions in Guernica, intelligently, to depict the suffering of the Spanish people. Picasso was Spanish and undoubtedly his emotions on canvas would be national biased. His depiction of the horrifying events of violence and chaos depicted history’s first aerial saturation bombing of the civilian population^[25].

Guernica is a distorted perception that uses emotional coloring to spread awareness about some aspect of reality. A typical negative bias supports Guernica to be the ‘most useful’ object to portray history because we tend to focus more on the negative things than the positive. At first glance, Guernica reveals confusing and chaotic thoughts for its viewers as it provides overlapping and intersecting boundaries that shift perspectives.

Critics claim that it fails to convey the important story despite its visual appeal. The late art critic, John Berger argues that Guernica makes no reference to the Spanish civil war. In fact, under certain experiments, Guernica was displayed to actual survivors of the bombing and they were utterly confused. Lastly Tom Wolfle the novelist claims that Guernica looks like a horse choking on a banana^[26]

Museums play a fundamental role in opening the doors to the realms of art and history. Notably, artists are compared to historiographers due to their extensive knowledge of the subject. The combination of the two AOKs helps in forming personal connections, not just about the artist’s perspective but also the facts embedded in the story. Perception increases the sophistication of the students’ understanding of history because of its selective nature.

The interests of the students and the underlying emotions help perception to propel, especially through the point of view of history and arts combined. Not only this, ‘seeing is believing’ also helps in making connections that provokes art students to gather insight about events, time periods by using colors and shapes to interpret lifelike historical inquiries

Tshibumba, a Congo artist, artworks are a part of the “History of Zaire ” collection and are of significant academic importance that contributes as rich in written, oral, and visual history displayed in the Tropen Museum in Amsterdam^[27].

Unfortunately, many major museums shy away to display some truly great works of art forbidding public view either due to lack of space or they no longer fit into the museum’s curatorial missions^[28].

Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art removed many paintings as they represent western cultures and were considered to be symbols of decadence including Francis Bacon’s, ‘Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants due to nudity or homoerotic overtones^[29]. As time passes, the quantum of artifacts continues to increase however adding little usefulness due to the subjective approach.

Additionally, the cinematic studies in arts have profoundly added value due to its powerful display of culture, education, leisure and propaganda to gain historical knowledge^[30] Arts perhaps could be unarguably the best way to feed nostalgia, to portray historical events. The fusion of creative imagination along with commemorated facts places cinema in a respectable cachet of entertainment as art.

John Akomfrah’s ‘Handsworth songs’ examines the historical, social, and political context of social unrest and aspires to explore the anger and disillusionment within the black communities. Not only this, Issac Julien’s Young Soul Rebels are experimental documentaries on black history. He also creatively exemplifies the topic of homosexuality, both within white society and black^[31].

However, there is an uncomfortable compromise between professional historians and historical films because cinema neglects the true spirit of history and often offers a representation of artistic imagination. Overlooking the finer details of history, including footnotes, may invariably lead to passing on inaccurate storytelling ^[32]. Such dilution and deviation through art are not considered beneficial.

While films can powerfully convey the foundations of historical information to millions of people, it fails to present a true document on the account of eyewitnesses. Spielberg’s Schindler’s list captures the true story of Oskar Schindler with almost no real historical accuracy^[33]. In addition to this, the popular Disney movie Pocahontas offers a distorted version of a 400-year-old tale about the tribal individuals of Virgina^[34].

Another perspective on history and arts, as a combination, can be established where teachers had to add humor and satire in the classroom to engage students’ attention. Few also found it difficult to teach a historical period with limited resources i.e. art. This results in the loss of different perspectives and students only receiving one half of the story.

In some cases, few resources miss the misrepresented version of history depicted in order to discuss important historical timelines^[35].

Finally, the studies of recorded pasts raise questions on the certainty about anything in the past and therefore documentary evidence plays an important role. Such evidence could be narrative style, use of language, construction of historical theory, using reasoning and imagination to be applied to various forms of art.

Similarly, art has a cognitive function to play in shaping up the beliefs about the past. The artistic creation using imagination and emotions has struck a role to convey historical events through movies and text. Undoubtedly no other areas of knowledge complement each other the way art and history do.

Despite first-hand field information, an artist’s imagination often fails to meet the spectator’s expectations, thereby inability to satisfy the quest for historical knowledge.

Similarly, most museums as archives of history and arts together have been incapable of utilizing the resources. It was contradictory to learn that much of the artwork is not used and put on display due to lack of time, space, culture. In such scenarios, many teachers find it difficult to combine the two AOK’s as their cognitive utility. However many artists have appreciated the true meaning of history while others’ work has been put down due to cultural differences.

Furthermore few documentary movies have aided in presenting us social perspectives of past time, however many films have also been accused of misrepresenting history.

The perspective of history can be predisposed without the relevant source material and therefore the use of contemporary documents, explanations in literature, viewpoints of individual eyewitnesses come in different shapes and sizes. Without the sense of emotion and imagination, history has little to offer without art. History and arts in combination with each other may not be most useful however they do serve their respective purposes together to a great extent.

Bibliography

^[1] http://journal.sjdm.org/bb10/bb10.html#:~:text=Definitions%20of%20trust%20vary%20but,Burt%20and%20Camerer%2C%201998).

^[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080521120511.htm

^[3] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Polybius

^[4] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324272147_Memory_and_Attention

^[5] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mein-Kampf

^[6] https://theconversation.com/mein-kampf-publication-the-best-way-to-destroy-hitlers-hateful-legacy-51707

^[7] https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/does-mein-kampf-remain-a-dangerous-book

^[8] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259310300_History_and_Collective_Memory_The_Succeeding_Incarnations_of_an_Evolving_Relationship

^[9] https://journals.openedition.org/rccsar/157

^[10] https://www.historynet.com/can-trust-ancient-texts.htm

^[11] https://scroll.in/article/924448/muhammad-bin-tughlaqs-story-cannot-be-told-in-an-unconvincing-furious-account-of-a-violent-life