Areas of knowledge/Ways of Knowing
The Arts
Emotion
Ethics
Faith
History
Imagination
Human Sciences
Intuition
Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Language
Mathematics
Memory
The Natural Sciences
Reason
Religious Knowledge Systems
Sense Perception
The Arts
The arts are the results of our creativity, including music, painting, sculpture, and literature.
Questions within this AoK include what constitutes art, whether art can be termed ‘good’ and
‘bad’, and to what extent our appreciation of art is universal.
The arts
Ethics
Ethics is the study of moral decision-making. To investigate this tricky area of knowledge, we
will consider questions such as the extent to which morality is relative, how to make ethical
decision, and how ethics relates to the other areas of knowledge.
Ethics
History
History is the study of the past. Questions we will address include the reason why it is
continually being reevaluated, what we can ever know for sure about past events, and
whether historians can ever escape their own paradigms.
History
Human Sciences
Human sciences are generally regarded as more ‘subjective’ than the natural sciences – in
other words, more subjective and open to debate. This is probably because we are dealing
with the most unreliable of matters – ourselves.
Human sciences
Indigenous Knowledge Systems
IKS is a new area of knowledge that focuses on the knowledge built up by cultures that
originally inhabited countries colonized and appropriated by Western nations.Their distinct
approach to the acquisition and application of knowledge demands that we question our
understanding of truth.
IKS
Mathematics
Mathematics is the ‘language of the universe’ – but is it really is 100% objective, does it
progress in the same way as other areas of knowledge, and how we can use the axioms of
mathematics to assist our powers of reason?
Mathematics
The Natural Sciences
Key questions in the natural sciences include what constitutes science, what makes scientific
investigation reliable, and how our view of science has changed over time. We’ll also compare
the human and natural sciences in terms of method.
Natural sciences
Religious Knowledge Systems
RKS has long existed on the fringes of the ‘official’ areas of knowledge, and has now been
elevated to one of the elect. What relationship does it have with faith and the other areas of
knowledge, and can it ever provide us with objective knowledge about the world?
Religious KS
Ways of knowing
Emotion
Emotion is hard to measure and assess, because each of us is affected in a different way by
our emotion. One key question we will explore is to what extent it helps or hinders us in
building up an objective picture of the world, and its relationship with reason.
Emotion
Faith
Faith is a new TOK way of knowing, and is perhaps the most devisive of all included on the
course. Does faith exist? Do you have to choose to have it? Is it inseparabe from religion – or
can atheists possess and experience it? How reliable is faith?
Faith
Imagination
Imagination is another new way of knowing for the course. We all possess it to some degree,
but to what extent is it necessary to the acquisition of knowledge in science and the arts?
Was Einstein right when he said it was more important than knowledge?
Imagination
Intuition
Intuition is the way in which we acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. Is
it a reliable way of learning about the world around us? Is it vital for leading us towards new
discoveries in the sciences? What role does it play in ethics?
Intuition
Language
Language is not only a way we understand the world, it is also the way we express ourselves,
and allow others to understand us. One of the key questions in language is to what extent is
our vision of the world limited by the language that we speak.
Language
Memory
Memory is the last ‘new’ way of knowing. Questions associated with it include whether it
really is a way of knowing, or just the accumulation of all the other ways of knowing, and the
extent to which we can build up knowledge without it.
Memory
Reason
Reason is traditionally portrayed as the opposite of emotion in terms of the acquisition of
knowledge. Key questions therefore include its relationship with emotion, the different forms
of reason, and the ‘enemies’ of reason such fallacies.
Reason
Sense perception
Sense perception is probably the most ‘immediate’ way of knowing, and the first that we
develop as human beings. The key question to contend with is how reliable our senses are,
and to what extent we can rely on them to provide us with ‘true’ knowledge.
Sense perception