TED Ankara College Foundation Private High School!

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Evolution & Adaptation of Thoughts and “True” Knowledge ! ! !!!

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE ESSAY

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!!Candidate’s Name: Mert İNAN

Candidate’s Session Number: 001129-0060

Supervisor: Emine Efecioğlu

Word Count: 1539

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Prescribed title: “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded

tomorrow.” Consider knowledge issues raised by this statement in two areas of knowledge.

001129-0060 Mert İNAN

Prescribed title: “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded

tomorrow.” Consider knowledge issues raised by this statement in two areas of knowledge.

! Humans have always outlasted the capabilities that were present inside them, they have

shown remarkable adaptations to their environment. In order to thrive in a world that was full of

information, they have tried all sorts of things, and while doing so, they have found the main aim;

the true perception that enabled all generations to interact between them and share the

information to continue their lives; the only reason that, our brains are present and, I can talk and

write in this manner. Humans stepped into the realm of the linkage between the reality and

ideality by discovering, knowledge. Fabric of nature enabled this kind of achievement by

providing peculiar data for the homo sapiens to calculate and find the true knowledge. With a

grand aim like this the humanity went onto a long journey that would last approximately forever.

This means that we still have a lengthy way to go. While in a journey like this, individuals made

mistakes, changed the fate of an entire civilization and sometimes discarded even the basic

knowledge for a greater aim.

Looking at the portrayal of 2 million years of human history mentioned briefly above, I

can understand and demonstrate the evolution of both human and the knowledge that is kept

inside them. There is a possibility that the knowledge -or theories about life- can be shifted and

generally it does this a lot, if we look at the science history. This brings up the issue of whether

our accepted theories today would survive as we go through decades that bring new inventions

and modern art movements. There will be consideration of knowledge issues about this

argument at each paragraph and I will be digging the areas of knowledge generally; mainly

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science & arts, and also perception, emotion and reasoning will be referenced as ways of

knowing.

First of all, I would like to start with a hypothetical example; think that extraterrestrial

species arrived to the post-apocalyptic Earth, and when they find a fossil of a human being they

will start to research about the former inhabitants of this planet. What would they think if they

find a mutated being caused by a nuclear war? They would think that all humans are like that and

even they would give us species names and classify the animals on the face of Earth according to

their rules. However, they won’t know that once I wrote this TOK Essay. But when an alien

scientist finds this writing, then their knowledge will be updated and they will believe the

knowledge that there was once a lesson called TOK. Assuming that they are intellectual

creatures, they will wonder about their, our and TOK lesson’s significance in the universe. This

eccentric example shows the original behavior of humans while researching the planet that we

live right now. As a result, a question can be raised like does our knowledge depends on the

presence of a knower? Or does it float independently in the universe and we just keep them and

discard them as we wish without changing their presence in the cosmos? There isn’t a definite

answer to this as we do not posses adequate information about judging the information itself.

However, a theory was first thought by Socrates under the philosophical term of empirical

rationalism that the mind was a carrier of knowledge. This theory states that the ideas continue

their existence in the universe of ideas, and we only call them from there to our mind when we

find the connection between the ideal meaning of an object and its real identity. This was an

introduction to the concept of knowledge, it's time to dive deeper...!

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001129-0060 Mert İNAN

! Humans have always wondered about their creation, meaning of life and such questions,

and in order to understand them and solve their mysteries, humans started to observe their

surroundings. They formed sciences and to express their feelings about these questions they

found arts. And both science and arts showed nearly the same evolution throughout the lifetime

of humanity, changing all the way. So, deriving from that point, some knowledge issues can be

asked like; “How does our knowledge depend on our perception of the outer world in the areas

of science and arts?” . Let's investigate this firstly in science . As we change the way we perceive

the world, we start to change the true knowledge that we believe. A perfect example would be a

quotation from Michio Kaku, “To understand how adding higher dimensions can simplify

physical problems, consider the following example: [Think about] the ancient Egyptians (...) to

whom the earth appeared flat, like a two-dimensional plane. But now imagine sending the

Egyptians in a rocket into outer space, where they can see the earth as simple and whole in its

orbit around the sun. Suddenly, the answers to these questions become obvious. (...) Facts that

were impossible to understand in a flat world suddenly become obvious when viewing a three-

dimensional earth.” [1] In this quotation, one can clearly see that the Egyptians changed the way

they perceived the world, as a result they would start to believe in a different knowledge than

they were doing before. So, this is generally the same act with other scientific discoveries. At

each discovery our perception changes and we start to accept new knowledge and discard the

older one.

As a counter example to that, some deep and emotional events can not be changed even

by changing perspectives. Let me give you an anecdote from my father's journey to Denmark.

When he went there and got out to wander around, a drunk person insulted him with a rude

racist attitude, however when he arrived at the hotel, his Danish friend apologized because of that

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001129-0060 Mert İNAN

person's behavior and changed his perspective about the Danish in a good way, however he still

hesitated to go out at night. So psychological analysis of this shows that even changed

perspective can sometimes be ineffective when the situation is very immense and emotional.

After science, if we look to the art we can focus on the cubism and expressionism. These

art movements are the changes themselves that incorporate change of perception in the artist.

For example when Pablo Picasso became aware of the forth dimension, time, he started to show

the different perspectives in a single painting, that can show the change of knowledge by means

of perception alteration. By doing this, he ensured that the viewer of the masterpieces, would

look at the same portrait of person but see hundreds of different perspectives.This proves that,

the art can change the perception of human mind and then can lead to the acceptance of a

different knowledge -different perspective in this example- by the knower.

On the contrary, perception change can also be ineffective in arts. As an example, if you

turn the painting of a geometrical and symmetrical object, your perspective would change, but

you would see the same object as you have seen it before. This suggests that human mind can

control whether the perception will be effective or not at some points and sometimes change in

perception can not lead to a whole different knowledge

When we go back to the original knowledge issue, after this burst of ideas, we can

change our perspective on the topic of effects of changing perspective on the circulation of

knowledge. We can generally state that -with simple exceptions like the ones as counter

examples above- evolution of our thoughts are provoked by the evolution of the human

mind and new discoveries both in science and art, so the knowledge adapts to the

perception of the human mind.

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001129-0060 Mert İNAN

Furthermore an additional knowledge issue can be raised like; “How does our changes

as individuals or nations in both reasoning and emotion affect the changes in the knowledge that

is considered true in science and arts?” An answer for this question can be this: we have to

change in order to survive, as a result our agenda changes too, forcing our knowledge that is

considered true to adapt as well. As the Doctor Who said, “Times change and so must I. We’re

all different people all through our lives. And that’s good, as long as you remember all the people

that you used to be.” [2] he states that the change is very good and probably it is inevitable.

Lastly, after all this discussion regarding the effects of humanly behaviors on the

adaptation of knowledge, a final different perspective can be added by asking: “Can we know

everything, or is there a limit to our learning ability; will there be a point where everything is

learned and silence has fallen?” Simply, we can not know all of this at this point, we have to come

to those events to make a comment.

All in all, after all of this personal exploration of the research topic, I have briefly

described my flow of ideas in the science and arts with the help of ways of knowing and

knowledge issues. I chose science and art because they were the fittest example as they always

change. Although, the knowledge issues above didn't have solid answers, it is certain that we and

all of our properties change as the time passes by...

BIBLIOGRAPHY ! 1. Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: a scientific odyssey through parallel universes, time warps and the tenth dimension, 1995, Preface ix

2. http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-01-08/matt-smith-burst-into-tears-when-reading-

final-doctor-who-lines

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