Intoduction to Areas of Knowledge for IB Theory of Knowledge

1. ToK – Areas of Knowledge

2. The IB Classification
mathematics
natural sciences
human sciences
history
the arts
ethics
religious knowledge systems
indigenous knowledge
systems.

3. Aristotle

4. The Seven Epitomes
Ancient Chinese Text,
1st century bc

5. The Seven Arts
Grammar
Rhetoric
Logic/dialectic
Arithmetic
Geometry
Music
Astronomy/astrology
Hortus Deliciarum,
12th C.

6. The Seven Arts
Grammar, rhetoric,
logic/dialectic,
arithmetic,
geometry, music,
and
astronomy/astrology
Al-
Ghazālī
11th
century
Persia
Hortus Deliciarum,
12th C.

7. Knowledge dividing
into
Philosophy,
Eloquence,
Poetry
Mechanics
14th century
manuscript.

8. Hobbes,
Leviathan,
1651

9. In the Encyclopédie,
Diderot and
d’Alembert started
from Memory,
Reason and
Imagination (three IB
Ways of Knowing!)

10. S T Coleridge
Pure Sciences
Mixed and applied
sciences
Biographical and
histrorical
Miscellaneous and
lexographical

11. The IB Classification
mathematics
natural sciences
human sciences
history
the arts
ethics
religious knowledge systems
indigenous knowledge
systems.

12. What are the distinctive features of an area of
Knowledge? (The knowledge framework)
1. Scope and application
2. Concepts/Language
3. Methodology
4. Historical development
5. Links to personal knowledge

13. Some questions for discussion
1. What are the implications of claiming that the division of knowledge into disciplines and the
division of the world into countries on a map are both artificial? (adapted from an old ToK
essay title )
2. Do all areas of knowledge use the same kind of language? And what are the consequences of
your answer? Consider this: «The vocabulary we have does more than communicate our
knowledge; it shapes what we can know». (apparently a quotation from Aristotle used in a
recent essay title)
3. To what extent are the various areas of knowledge defined by their methodologies rather
than their content? (Recent essay title)
4. To what extent has knowledge in the AoK changed over time? What might it take to convince
a person to discard and replace knowledge? (Gist of 2014 essay title)
5. What are the implications of this famous quotation? «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» (Konrad Lorenz)