Deadline for first full draft – Friday 16th January 2015 (on the google Document)
Deadline for completed TOK essay – Monday 23rd February
- There is no such thing as a neutral question. Evaluate this statement with reference to two areas of knowledge.
- “There are only two ways in which humankind can produce knowledge: through passive observation or through active experiment.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?
- “There is no reason why we cannot link facts and theories across disciplines and create a common groundwork of explanation.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?
- With reference to two areas of knowledge discuss the way in which shared knowledge can shape personal knowledge.
- “Ways of knowing are a check on our instinctive judgments.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?
- “The whole point of knowledge is to produce both meaning and purpose in our personal lives.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?download essay titles 2015.
General Guidance
The essays are mush broader this year and are therefore open to interpretation. Given the word count it is very difficult to nail the issues in a broad way. You need to focus down and give your essay a real sense of direction with specified objectives etc.
#1. Nail the Knowledge Question
This is TOK 101 – always look for the knowledge question! This is a process of identifying the question beneath the question. The central ‘clash’ in the topic – the nub of what the issue to do with knowledge is. You may identify an overarching knowledge question which can then be broken up into 2-3 sub-questions that are more specific and that deal with specific areas of knowledge and/or ways of knowing.
So for question 1 this might be. “To what extent can any question be neutral?” Sub questions may be …. “Do questions predetermine answers and thereby take us only to partial or biased truth?”
#2. Rewrite the question giving more specific details about treatment
The essay titles this year are very open. In order to make sense of them you need to decide how to focus them so that they become workable within the short word count. To do this either completely rewrite them or extend them to make them more defined.
For instance Essay 1 may become ….. “Explore the extent to which questions and research methods can ever be neutral and objective in the Human Sciences and Ethics”
Please upload your responses to #1 and #2 as well as stating which title you have chosen to the document here
"Knowing how you know" 