Dear Everyone,

In our current exploration of the natural sciences, it is important to get some experience of the development of science and how this happens. Although you certainly should draw on your personal exposure to science from your science courses and lessons, in some ways this will not be enough to gain a full understanding of what we want to talk about in TOK with regard to science. This is because much of what you learn in science classes is about how science is understood NOW rather than how that understanding developed in the past. We need both.

You will find a fascinating documentary on the development of physics in the 20th century at:

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There is a worksheet at the same location with the same name - use it to guide your viewing and to focus on the key points that are made. We expect you to make the time to watch this video between now and next Monday as we will ask you for your reactions next week in class.

Dear IB1 TOKers,

I am excited by the development of this new blog and grateful to those who have spent their time setting it up. A round of applause for you! This blog provides a vital channel for TOK discussion beyond the classroom, and we intend to use it to the limit of its potential. We expect everyone to contribute, not least because these contributions will be considered when we come to decide on semester grades from now on. So get involved!

Here is my first contribution.

Some of us have been thinking about whether science is better described as a body of knowledge or as a way of thinking. Please give this some thought, and then go to the following college network location and read the short article from the New York Times that I have entitled "Anthropology as Science":

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If we consider the body of knowledge in anthropology to be about human culture(s), would that subject matter allow anthropologists legitimately to call their subject a science?

If science is better thought of as a way of thinking, then what should anthropologists be doing or be able to do in order for them legitimately to call themselves scientists?

The article suggests that there are those in the anthropological community who "see themselves as advocates for native peoples or human rights" - do you think that the anthropologists who see themselves in this way can legitimately call themselves scientists? Why or why not?

Lastly, why should people get so serious and heated about whether the word "science" is or isn't included in a mission statement? It's just a word, isn't it?

Looking forward to some interesting dialogue on this...

Seeing as we closed the chapter on Semester I studying EMOTION, it would be nice to refresh our mind on this topic. Accordingly, this excerpt on Pascal Bruckner’s book, The Tyranny of Guilt, suggests that the Western world’s expression of guilt in certain instances allow us to infer certain truths about them. However whether this proposition about emotion ultimately revealing inherent truths about people or societies is true or not is up for discussion:

With slavery, the Holocaust, and colonialism behind us, we in the west like to lay claim to all that is corrupt and evil in humanity. "The Euro-American is simultaneously cursed and indispensable," writes Bruckner. "Thanks to him, everything becomes clear, evil acquires a face, the dirty rat is universally designated. Biological, political, metaphysical guilt."
Thus it was that so many fine minds could greet the incineration of 3,000 people live on television in 2001 with cries of: "We had it coming"; "What did we expect?"; or, in Baudrillard's case, something close to jubilation.
But, Bruckner argues, this self-recrimination amounts to little more than delusional narcissism, a means of sustaining a sense of our own importance not through the exercise of power but through the expression of remorse. As European influence contracts, so do our claims on responsibility expand. "Our superiority complex has taken refuge in the perpetual avowal of our sins," writes Bruckner, "a strange way of inflating our puny selves to global dimensions."