12 Theory of Knowledge 2013-2014

Mae Jemison, astronaut, doctor, artist, etc., argues for the link between Art and Science.

TED Talk reflecting Zimbardo's work on Social Psychology and the Nature of Darkness in the Human Psyche

Several versions of this video depicting Milgram's work in Social Psychology are available. This one is worth your time, but you'll see others work a look when you open the page.

Think you can read how another person feels? Give this quick quiz a try!

i got 7/10 right...hahaha

Video by Howard Zinn in support of the discussion on the radical school of history.

An interesting short, I think that it highlights some major issues with the ways that we are manipulated. The iconic image of the Vietnam veterans throwing their medals at the White House was probably the most striking one to me. The reason is that it appeals to me emotionally by showing that these men feel that their awards for fighting were not worth holding onto in this war. I think that the fact that this video is so concise limits its potential to inform, but gives it the potential to make people want more knowledge. I think that in the area of knowledge of art this film also has its appealing qualities. The ironic image of the elephant and donkey standing at a podium makes me think of the statement, "the US congress is one party with two right wings." Although this is a rather sweeping statement, I think that it is one that particularly resonates with me, as I agree with it to a certain extent. The real question is: What is to be done? (credits to Lenin). I am no neo-Marxist idealist so I would not propose that this is the way out, but I think that serious revision of the aims of nations worldwide must be brought underway if we are to have the remotest idea of world peace. This film highlights a small portion of what history is, and I think that it is important that we do not forget that the analysis of past events is the key to synthesizing a better future.

This video had quite a few links to a very enlightening book called Democracy Incorporated that I read a few months ago. It discusses the concept of 'inverted totalitarianism', which discusses how America is controlling the world for economic and market supremacy. I found the video to have brought up very interesting issues about how historical events have been portrayed and taught in the past, and what the truer motives behind them were. There has been some sort of empire ever since humans have been able to travel and conquer, but none have ever matched the scale or influence of the American one we have today. It was a short film, and mostly about Zinn's personal experience, but it was revealing about the undercurrents of history. I also found it interesting that in my HL history class, we learn all about the subtleties of history, and the things that Zinn mentioned that were apparently only in the secret archives are facts that we are told from the very beginning, such as the real motives behind US involvement in Korea and Vietnam. It raises important questions about historical knowledge at different times. Was the history that kids were taught in the sixties 'wrong' if they thought about it a certain way then, and didn't have the knowledge we have? There are experts on the 9/11 tragedy, but so they have as much expertise in it as someone in the future that might discover some hidden archive? how much extra knowledge is needed to prove former conceptions about a historical event wrong? History can be told in many different ways, and it is ironic that there are so many different perspectives and views on a single event that happened the way it did.

I intend to offer this to you in class; however, as time may not allow, Sean Gurley's discussion here is an interesting and unique insight relevant to the positivist approach to history insofar that historical events may be utilized to make predictions on future events.

A good statistic to keep in mind when analyzing any conflict. The question of what is an attack comes to mind, would 9/11 come under this? Would the Tet Offensive come under this definition of "attack"? If so, I think we have to consider the other side. I think his statistics were great, but I would like to see the other end. Maybe a series of statistics of the drone attacks? I think that the meaning of this video is good, but that statistics can be manipulated in many ways. Yes, the Serbs in Yugoslavia were massacring people in the thousands, it wasn't even safe to walk the streets, a nightmare of a state really. But one interesting statistic to consider is this one that I heard earlier: 14 tanks were destroyed by NATO bombings, 147 schools were destroyed by NATO bombings. Even if they're unoccupied, this is still a pretty inefficient method of warfare. Which raises the question, is there a proper way to fight war? Maybe Henry David Thoreau's idea of passive resistance works, but maybe events like the Sharpeville massacre prove it wrong. These sort of statistics are the most serious sort in a war, but not necessarily the most "truthful". In retrospect, I think that the writings of Robert Fisk are my favorite when it comes to covering war. This is because he focuses on the people on the ground, but not the soldiers, the ones who are the innocent victims of war. In conclusion, I think that this was an informative video, but one that I would consider a largely West-centric one at the same time.

Probably the greatest example of how easy it was to be sucked into erroneous beliefs.

Required Viewing for our ToK Unit on History as an AoK

After watching this video, the first thing that came to my mind was, "wooooow". I really liked the way Mr. David Christian had explained his thoughts and ideas. His analogy of the egg being mush and our complexity being similar was clear in his context. It all also made sense to me about the difference between humans and other species since we have language and a different degree of collective learning. Overall, the video was very instructive, explanatory and very well constructed. That's why even though it seemed to be very confusing and had a sort of overload of information, the way it was represented made it easier for the audience to comprehend. That's why I got the chance to really understand and think about his ideas in depth. The way he studied history and explained it to the audience was most entertaining and educational in my opinion. The reason I think this is because he took a different approach to history. Usually when people refer to history it's focused on human history and what we had done as species. But his approach is very scientifically based and focused which made it more factual which in affect made it make more sense to me. I understood what he meant about the complexity of the world being the base of it's development although I didn't completely understand it.

The most intriguing idea I took from this video was the first concept presented by David Christian - the idea that the general tendency in the universe is for things to go from order to lack of order and entropy. Although he does present this idea in the context of physics through the second law of thermodynamics, I find this a little confusing personally because if I were to think in terms of, say, particle physics, the general tendency is for particles to decay from a high energy state to a low energy state; this could be interpreted as things going from lack of order, to order, contrary to what Christian introduces in his TED talk (do correct me if I'm wrong). However, I do see the error in my thought processing as I realise that if I were to look at things in the context of scientific history, single-cell organisms evolved into multiple-cell organisms, which then developed tissues and organs and so on and so forth. From this perspective, I completely understand the tendency of "mush" going to complexity. Hence, I am a little perplexed at this first premise of the video. I found the Goldilocks condition to be intriguing as well as we see this happen often if we were to look at it in terms of science. For instance, an electronic transition can only occur if you transfer the exact amount of energy to an electron, or the activation energy required for a chemical reaction to occur (you may have noticed my trend to look at things in terms of science). If the model of the universe follows these Goldilocks condition, would it ever be possible to predict the next "threshold" of development? This comes back to the Positivist school of history: the idea that we are able to predict future events based on patterns derived from the past course of history. However, as we established today in class, history may not exactly be predictable, due to inconsistencies and irrationalities of the human mind. Then again, factoring out mankind and its tendency to be illogical

Good simple documentary on how the world is run.

This is a great (rather long) writing by Tolstoy on the nature of history.

The whole documentary. Required viewing for our ToK Unit on History as an AoK.

This is probably one of the greatest historical documents ever produced. I do not want to go on about the quality of the film but I think that its value is paramount in understanding the nature of the Cold War and the epic redundance of policies such as MAD and the Madman Theory. Considering this from the AoK of art, I think that the quality of the film is unsurpassed as a documentary, with key images given with extremely important text. As a philosophical piece it is also of extreme importance, as it gives one the ability to realize that perspective is everything. The numerous misunderstandings that McNamara had with his foes gives clear evidence to value of patience and analysis of context in any conflict. Furthermore, the value of this piece is in the fact that it is given from the perspective of a man who lost so much (including his son's love) for a cause which he denounces in this film. Finally, as a historical document, I feel that this film particularly resonated with me. First of all, as a primary document it gave great insight into the Cold war. Secondly, the fact that it has the (huge) benefit of hindsight shows that this man is now as well informed as I think he can be on the events that he participated in. Lastly, I think that the emotion and language conveyed through this film shows that reason is often our last priority in a crisis, and that we often seek "victory" over our enemies at all costs.

Enjoy this eight minute discussion in support of the relativist subjective school of history.

The idea presented here is very interesting, increasing the depths of historical analysis through digital statistics and other forms of measurement. This provides a different dimension to studying history, as normally it revolves around studying various human factors before and after an event, the possible advent of math incorporated in the subject would enable a new and greater understanding of a particular time period, while also allowing for future speculation of events that could lead to prevention of potentially negative ones. The only problem with this talk is it is short and leaves the viewer with unanswered doubts (intentional?), such as how can one be certain that algorithms based on the past where circumstances were entirely different are reliable for predicting future events?

Jean Baptiste Michel comments on the human ability to "perceive quantities" (2:30, the mathematics of history), he goes on to explain his point with this analogy; committing 10,000 soldiers to a battle in which already 1,000 soldiers have been committed previously, is relatively an enormous quantity of soldiers to the war. On the other hand, committing 10,000 soldiers to a battle in which already 100,000 soldiers have been previously committed is a relatively low quantity in terms of war. I found this to be interesting, in how our mathematical process affects our perception of history. War is a prominent fixture in human history, while death is a way in which people can relate to history, mathematics plays a prominent part in understanding and quantifying an emotional response from an individual. Michel states to the that large numbers of casualties in war's are proportional to the relative stakes, so therefore the larger the number of casualties, mathematically could have less emotional impact to an individual. This is becomes an issue when studying war's and conflicts in our history. While we inherently bring greater importance to events in which many casualties occurred yet are unable to emotionally connect due to our mathematical and statistical reasoning and perception.

I really liked this TED Talk because it looked at history in a way that I never thought would be possible - through mathematics. I found it interesting that humans behave in systematic, mathematical ways, even though we don't think we do. Natural sciences such as physics and chemistry all have some mathematical bases or phenomena that can be explained in terms of maths. Social sciences, such as economics, history and psychology are rarely ever explained in terms of mathematics. It seems illogical to think that humans behave in a systematic manner. However, I think that if this idea of mathematics being a part of history becomes popularized, this could help us in many ways. In the beginning, we would be able to understand the patterns in history, we'd be able to understand part of the human thinking process, such as the perception of quantities and how it affects our decisions, as Jean-Baptiste Michel said. Later on, however, we would be able to predict the future and possibly prevent unfavourable outcomes. I think the systematic way of looking at history may be a big step for humanity. (Although, it may cause us to act like robots, which may lead to other implications.)

The perspective of beauty from different AOKs. 

Required Reading for our ToK Unit on History as an AoK.

I found this argument and concept very exciting. I've always been passionate and interested in learning and developing understanding of different cultures, and what different cultures find sacred. In the two main cultures I was raised in (American and Omani), mathematics plays an important role in education and careers. It had never occurred to me that individuals around the world could view mathematics in a religious and holy light. The Bamana priests found their sand divinations so sacred that they wouldn't share their "secrets" with Eglash. Only his initiation into Bamana priesthood allowed him access to the secrets. The fact that the Bamana priests guarded their divinations so much demonstrates the significance they believe mathematics has, and correlates with the spiritual qualities they believe mathematics to have. While this belief of math having divine qualities is new to me, it has been recurrent in mathematical history. Funnily enough, it sounds like Cantor believed himself to be a "mathematical prophet". Whether we believe his claim to be true or not, he also considered math a divine matter, and provided us with mathematical concepts that have come to shape our technology-driven, modern world. I've struggled with math as an academic subject, consistently viewing it as something that "needs to be done" rather than something that is fascinating and representative of culture and identity. What Eglash is doing by connecting individuals with their "mathematical cultural heritage" is inspiring. It is providing a new backdrop for mathematical education and is (I believe) fundamental to developing deeper understandings of mathematics in cultures.

What I thought was interesting was that he brought up that mathematics is in nature and it is there consciously however we are unconscious about it. All the examples from Africa explains mathematics in real life and in their culture however they do not take it as "mathematics", they just do it. They know about the mathematics that goes into the process though Englash went back the process to see the mathematics in it. This was interesting people with more developed technology goes back to understand the mathematics behind what people in Africa do in their daily life. I never thought mathematics can connect to nature or some people's daily life. To me, mathematics seemed very abstract and I just couldn't see it connecting with mathematics because I believed things that happens in nature are more spontaneous and without any particular patterns. Now I think I understand when people say "we need mathematics for everything" and "we cannot live without mathematics", though we need most subjects that we learn in school. We tend to just think about a subject in the particular class room when we should paying more attention outside of class to see how it connects to us and how most things in life is from what we learn in school.

I found this TED Talk very interesting, and after watching this and especially after today's TOK class, I am starting to realize the mathematical concepts in different situations and environments around me. One things that Mr Eglash said that really intrigued me was the function of the fractals in the villages of Cameroon. He explained and showed a diagram illustrating how the houses in a village all circle the leader's home in the middle, who is in the middle of his family within the bigger circle. Even the houses on the outside are surrounded by other houses in a circle, and I found the reason behind this mathematical layout very interesting. Eglash explained how when people went deeper and deeper in the cirles, they had to be more polite and respectful. Also the more important people were in the centre of the circles. These two factors highlight how mathematics is used as a form of representing social hierarchy/discrimination, as social class and importance in the society is reflected through one's position in the multiple fractals. Also, another thing that I found interesting goes back to a central debate we discussed in class: was mathematics invented or discovered? Eglash told us how the people in these various African tribes had told him that they had not known what fractals were, they had just shaped their villages this way because they looked attractive and interesting, and in my opinion fulfilled their social representational needs. But we have made something out of shapes within shapes, we have given thm names, applications and intellectual importance. But these African villages have given them applications and importance as well, without even knowing what they were. But a question arises: do we even know what they are? We have given them meaning through our interpretations and perceptions, but how can we know whether 'our' fractionals are the same as 'their' fractionals? Do we need to mathematically understand what something is in order to find it useful

Please check out this wonderfully insightful and totally relevant exploration of Andrew Wiles and his work with Fermat's Last Theorem.