Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet--We're Hunting Knowidge

By now, you and your peripatetic partner have identified a moment of knowledge with different implications for each of you, based on your cultures, your societies, your unique perspectives as knowers.  By 9:30 pm on Wednesday, please record below what you found, what it means to you, what it means to your partner, and whence the differences.  Read the full class's posts before we meet on Thursday and arrive ready to discuss, please.

SoScietal Knowledge

After today's productive and enlightening discussion, I believe I've learned my lesson: focus! To that end, let's build on the thinking and writing you did on the ways and extents to which science is shaped by societies.  In your science class tomorrow, or in your work from earlier this term, select a moment of knowledge that is a product of the society that produced it.  You might identify an idea that is presented as an objective truth but that doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of other perspectives, or you may discover a truth that is knowingly dependent on a certain societal bent.  Either way, identify the moment, explain the perspective(s) at work, and consider (in writing) how another perspective would change the facts or meaning(s) of the facts.  Please complete this work by 9:30 Wednesday evening, then read others' writing before class on Thursday.

Lead On, Grasshopers

To follow up on this weekend's Leadership Symposium & Gala, I'd like you to consider leadership.  What does leadership mean to you?  What are the ideal qualities of leadership?  Primarily, please think and write about what your cultures (family, native, other) have taught you to value in a leader.  My goal is for us to examine the overlap and differences between your perspectives as knowers, which we will pursue in our discussion on Tuesday.  Please post by 9:30 pm on Monday, then read one another's comments before Tuesday's class.

Is It Me, Or Did You Just Change the World?

For Tuesday morning, please reflect on the text below.  Your writing should include—though not be limited to—answers to the four questions that follow the excerpt.  We will begin our class discussion here, and write further for Thursday.

“If when we learn new things we can see the world differently, then as we learn new things we react to it differently.  We are then living in a different world, a world with different possibilities, different impossibilities.  Which world is the right one, the real one?  Is it the new world or the old?  What do we mean by this question?  And, ultimately the question, if this is true, what new things should we try to learn so as to live in a different world?” (Lawrence LeShan, Alternate Realities: The Search for the Whole Human Being. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987, 8.)

1. What happens to us when we learn?

2. What happens to the world when we learn?

3. Do human beings, living in the same society, live in different worlds because of what they know?             

4. How does the following quote, from Emerson's Self-Reliance, affect your thinking on the previous question? “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all...that is genius."

Tuesday Update:

Please continue your conversation in the context of the following ideas and questions, the first in honor of the 84th anniversary this week of the publication of The Sound and the Fury.  This writing should reflect your consideration of your classmates' first round of comments on this post, as well as our class discussion.

"Fact and truth really don't have much to do with each other"
-William Faulkner


"Every knowledge system is shaped by the characteristics of the society that produced it.  We are accustomed to considering the flow in the opposite direction, seeing how scientific and technological advances have shaped modern society.  But it is of critical importance to recognize both flows.  We have the kind of society we have in part because of the fruits of science and technology.  But the converse is also true: we have the kind of science we have in part because of the particular nature of the society in which it was developed."  (Willis Harman, Global Mind Change: The Promise of the Last Years of the Twentieth Century.  Indianapolis: Knowledge Systems, Inc., 1988, 27.)


1.  How has your knowledge system been shaped by your society?  For example, how has science been shaped by your society?
2.  Can different societies have different sciences, histories, etc.?
3.  To what extent do you agree with Faulkner's assessment?

And speaking of decoding, check this out.  

What's Going On Here?

Congratulations!  You're off to a brave and productive start on your TOK journey.  As I mentioned in class, I'd like you to go one step further and define--for yourself, for me, for one another, and for visitors here--what it is we're up to.  Theory of Knowledge is sometimes called a course in practical philosophy, a study of metacognition, and an epistemological investigation.  But so what?  For Thursday morning, please write a thoughtful, thorough paragraph describing the course as you see it. As I'm delighted one of you asked in class, yes, it can also be funny.  We'll use your descriptions to assemble a collective blurb for our blog.