TOK FINAL #2

A Persian Proverb says, "Doubt is the key to knowledge." This can be true to most areas of knowledge. History, math, science, and language.

"Doubt is the key to knowledge." How is this true? Almost every person is trying to obtain knowledge. If someone is always finding a flaw in an other's theory, then they will try to prove them wrong. This will conclude in more and more information being found that will get us closer to gaining a greater knowledge. This cycle is never-ending though. This is because there will always be a person who will want to disprove what someone else says is true. That is a good thing, because like I said above, it will find more facts and better information to get knowledge. If any one person is willing to dig up evidence against something, more will be found. If they doubt something that they are learning, or have already learned, then more information will be discovered.

History is a great area of knowledge where this is true. History is not a subject set up on facts and proof. It is all about peoples perception and point of view who were there at the time. There is so much room for interpretation and for people to think whatever they want to. Therefore, there is a lot of room for doubt. Once the doubt is reached, then people go and research and try to prove it wrong. More information is found and, like said before, a greater knowledge is found.

Another area of knowledge were this Persian Proverb can be true is science. Science is based on theories and experiments that can always be proved or disproved. That means there is always doubt. It starts out with some guy, or girl, who does experiments to prove a theory. Then another person comes and doubts that theory and has a different one. He has a theory that disproves it and starts experimenting. This is an endless cycle that goes on and on, so new information is always being found, and there will always be more information to be found, just because one person has a doubt of what someone else has said. Human sciences is also a big one. People are always doing research and finding stuff to support what there thoughts are. This is good with psychology and how people act they way they do. Ethics and morals, stuff like that. People are always finding more facts and trying harder to understand this, Doubt probably fuels the motivatiion to do all this research and experiments.

History and the sciences are areas of knowledge that supports the ancient Persian Proverb. However, there are two subjects that does not support this proverb so well. One of these subjects is math. Math is a bunch of facts, even though some old guys just made them up a long time ago, that solve problems. Math does not have room for doubt. They are straight facts that says this does this and this does this to get this. There was probably sometime that had some doubt because there a multiple ways were you can solve a couple math problems. I do not know what that is about though. English is another area of knowledge. Creative writing, drama, or any other types of english that is out there. This is not because it is made up of facts and numbers, it is because it is all interpretation. There is som that are facts, like the rules. Puncuation, sentence structure, grammer, spelling... Most of it, though, just comes from peoples imagination. They can be structures from things that have already happened, but you are writing about you interpretation of things.