AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE (AOK)Overview

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 RenanActivity: You can send a message back through time (say

1000 years), but only a single A4 sheet. What do you say?

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?

AoK disciplinesGod may have separated the heavens from the earth. He did not

separate astronomy and marine biologyJonathon Levy

To what extent are the classifications separating Areas of Knowledge justified?

IBO 20021. Initial reactions to this?2. Do academic disciplines arise out of natural categories?3. If so, is there some ‘common sense’ about them, or might

distinctions relate to time and place?4. Consider: Confucious and archery, Greeks and harmonics,

medieval European universities, Alchemy, origins of economics, biology and psychology. Also ITGS

5. Consider TOK at Mowbray College6. What would be in your ideal DP course: now, 20 years, 50

years?

AoK disciplines Mathematical knowledge Natural Sciences Human Sciences History Ethics Art

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

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

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

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?

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?

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?

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?