Climate Change Questions

History Knowledge Issues

Tok Prescribed Titles
November 2009 and May 2010

General Guidelines
· 1200-1600 words
· Stay focused on Knowledge Issues
· Refer to other parts of your IB Program
· Refer to your own personal experiences as a knower
· Justify your statements
· Provide relevant examples to illustrate your arguments
· Pay attention to the implications of your arguments
· Consider what might be said against your arguments

Choose one of the following:
1. To what extent is truth different in mathematics, the arts and ethics?
2. Examine the ways empirical evidence should be used to make progress in different areas of knowledge
3. Discuss the strengths and limitations of quantitative and qualitative data in supporting knowledge claims in the human sciences and at least one other area o knowledge.
4. How can the different ways of knowing help us to distinguish between something that is true and something that is believed to be true?
5. “What separates science from all other human activities is its belief in the provisional nature of all conclusions: (Michael Shermer, www.edge.org). Critically evaluate this way of distinguishing the sciences from other areas of knowledge
6. All knowledge claims should be open to rational criticism. On what ground and to what extent would you agree with this assertion?
7. “We see and understand things not as they are but as we are.” Discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing.
8. “People need to believe that order can be glimpsed in the chaos of events" (adapted from John Gray, Heresies, 2004). In what ways and to what extent would you say this claim is relevant in at least two areas of knowledge?
9. Discuss the claim that some areas of knowledge are discovered and others are invented.
10. What similarities and differences are there between historical and scientific explanations?

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History Knowledge Issues