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AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE (AOK)

Delve into various Areas of Knowledge (AOK) disciplines, from Mathematics to Art, and their relevance in guiding truth. Reflect on the evolution of knowledge, distinctions between disciplines, and the unity vs. diversity debate. Analyze key thinkers like Emilie Durkheim and Max Weber in the realm of human sciences.

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AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE (AOK)

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  1. AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE (AOK) Overview

  2. Knowledge today and yesterday • “When we consider…our knowledge of most things…it is our familiarity (with these things) rather than knowledge that takes away their strangeness, and if these things were presented to us newly, we should think them as incredible as any other” Montaigne • “The simplest of schoolboys is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life” Ernest Renan Activity: • You can send a message back through time (say 1000 years), but only a single A4 sheet. What do you say?

  3. AoK disciplines • Discipline: An established branch of knowledge with its own subject area and method of engaging in it Bastian 2008 • What are the AoK offered in the IB Diploma? • Does this make sense? Why? • Refer back to your time-machine message. How is the knowledge distributed? • What does this say about what you value? • What would people 50 years in the future send us? What would we want? • What, if anything, would this indicate about their values?

  4. AoK disciplines God may have separated the heavens from the earth. He did not separate astronomy and marine biology Jonathon Levy To what extent are the classifications separating Areas of Knowledge justified? IBO 2002 • Initial reactions to this? • Do academic disciplines arise out of natural categories? • If so, is there some ‘common sense’ about them, or might distinctions relate to time and place? • Consider: Confucious and archery, Greeks and harmonics, medieval European universities, Alchemy, origins of economics, biology and psychology. Also ITGS • Consider TOK at Mowbray College • What would be in your ideal DP course: now, 20 years, 50 years?

  5. AoK disciplines • Mathematical knowledge • Natural Sciences • Human Sciences • History • Ethics • Art

  6. Disciplines as guides to truth • Consider: (blue is common sense, red is actual) • Objects will stop moving unless continuously pushed • Contradicted by Newton’s Laws of Motion (Natural Sciences) • Living things have a life force, non-living things don’t • Contradicted by modern Chemistry • Humans have a soul and no other living creature does • Contradicted by modern Psychology • Price are a fixed feature of a product

  7. Disciplines as guides to truth • Evolutionary psychology: • Ways of Knowing evolved in ways that helped us to survive • Perception and quickly recognizing danger • Speed of emotional response • Reasoning and social arrangements

  8. Disciplines and knowledge as a whole • Can we unify all knowledge, with shared base? • Physics and the big TOE • Consilience – that all sciences, humanities, and arts can be brought together in coherence as ‘nature is organised by simple laws of physics to which all other laws and principles can eventually be reduced’ E.O.Wilson, 1998

  9. Disciplines and knowledge as a whole • ‘Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing’ K. Lorenz • Renaissance Man • Growth of Knowledge • Hat does it mean and how should we respond?

  10. Diversity or unity: which is better? • What are these? • Inter-disciplinary • Trans-disciplinary • Multi-disciplinary • Cross-disciplinary • Is it more important to respect the diversity of disciplines or attempt to merge them?

  11. Disciplines – boundaries and distinctions • On what basis could this arrangement be justified? • What are the other possibilities? (try one, and justify) • To what extent do you think that the criteria used to create these classifications make hidden value judgments or assumptions about different kinds of knowledge?

  12. Your task: - investigate: • What is a good model with which to describe human behaviour? • Can you be judged only by your actions – by what you are seen to do? • Are all actions observable? • Who have been the strongest voices in the field of human sciences, and what do they say? • Who are Emilie Durkheim and Max Weber • What is holism and what is methodological individualism? and why should we discuss them?

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