IB Theory of Knowledge 1 the Course

1.1.1 What knowledge is, and what it is not

1.1.2 Belief, truth and justification

1.1.3 Knowing how and knowing that

1.1.4 First-hand experience as a source

1.1.5 Testimony: knowing because you were told

1.1.6 Memory and its reliability

1.1.7 Intuition and gut feeling

1.1.8 Reason and its limits

1.1.9 Emotion in knowing

1.1.10 Knowledge communities and how they validate

1.1.11 Expertise and when to defer

1.1.12 Judging a source

1.1.13 Perspective and bias are not the same thing

1.1.14 Certainty, doubt and degrees of confidence

1.1.15 Responsibility and the ethics of knowing

1.1.16 Assessment bridge: the core theme in the exhibition

1.1.17 Questions about the world and questions about knowing

1.2.1 What counts as technology

1.2.2 Tools that extend perception

1.2.3 Instruments and mediated observation

1.2.4 Recording, storing and retrieving knowledge

1.2.5 Search and the shape of what we find

1.2.6 Algorithms and recommendation

1.2.7 Attention as a condition for knowing

1.2.8 Machine learning: what it does and does not do

1.2.9 Can a machine know anything?

1.2.10 Machine outputs as evidence

1.2.11 Bias in and out of systems

1.2.12 The digital divide as a knowledge problem

1.2.13 Privacy, surveillance and knowing about people

1.2.14 Who is responsible for machine-made knowledge?

1.2.15 Technology and the future of expertise

1.2.16 Assessment bridge: technology in the exhibition

1.3.1 How language carries knowledge

1.3.2 Naming and categorising

1.3.3 Metaphor as a thinking tool

1.3.4 Ambiguity, vagueness and precision

1.3.5 Does language shape thought?

1.3.6 Linguistic relativity: the careful version

1.3.7 Translation and what survives it

1.3.8 Untranslatable concepts

1.3.9 Jargon and technical language

1.3.10 Framing and euphemism

1.3.11 Rhetoric, persuasion and manipulation

1.3.12 Silence, taboo and the unsayable

1.3.13 Language and power

1.3.14 Non-verbal and symbolic communication

1.3.15 Language, harm and responsibility

1.3.16 Assessment bridge: language in the exhibition

1.4.1 What a political knowledge claim is

1.4.2 Facts, values and policy

1.4.3 Polling and public opinion

1.4.4 Statistics and social indicators

1.4.5 Modelling and forecasting societies

1.4.6 Media as a knowledge source

1.4.7 Propaganda and disinformation

1.4.8 Conspiracy thinking

1.4.9 Ideology as a lens

1.4.10 Expertise and populism

1.4.11 Who certifies a political fact?

1.4.12 Power and the production of knowledge

1.4.13 Transparency, secrecy and the public interest

1.4.14 Political knowledge across cultures

1.4.15 What citizens and leaders owe the truth

1.4.16 Assessment bridge: politics in the exhibition

1.5.1 What a religious knowledge claim is

1.5.2 Revelation and sacred text

1.5.3 Tradition and authority

1.5.4 Faith and reason

1.5.5 Religious experience as evidence

1.5.6 Miracle claims and evidence standards

1.5.7 Arguments for and against

1.5.8 Interpretation and hermeneutics

1.5.9 Insider and outsider understanding

1.5.10 Religion and culture

1.5.11 Religion and science: conflict, independence, overlap

1.5.12 Religious pluralism and disagreement

1.5.13 Religion and ethical codes

1.5.14 Secular perspectives on religious knowledge

1.5.15 Religion, identity and community

1.5.16 Assessment bridge: religion in the exhibition

1.6.1 What a knowledge system is

1.6.2 Indigenous knowledge systems: scope

1.6.3 Orality and knowledge without writing

1.6.4 Story, song and ceremony as method

1.6.5 Land and place as knowledge

1.6.6 Ecological and practical knowledge

1.6.7 Kinship and who may know

1.6.8 Transmission across generations

1.6.9 The archive and the elder

1.6.10 Studying from outside: whose lens?

1.6.11 Colonisation and knowledge loss

1.6.12 Language loss and knowledge loss

1.6.13 Ownership and intellectual property

1.6.14 Appropriation and consent

1.6.15 Meeting other knowledge systems

1.6.16 Assessment bridge: indigenous societies in the exhibition

1.7.1 What makes a science?

1.7.2 The demarcation problem

1.7.3 Falsifiability and its limits

1.7.4 Observation is not passive

1.7.5 Instruments and mediated observation

1.7.6 Measurement, error and uncertainty

1.7.7 Designing an experiment

1.7.8 Controls, variables and confounds

1.7.9 Induction and the problem it raises

1.7.10 Models: what they are for and where they lie

1.7.11 Theories, laws and explanation

1.7.12 Prediction and its limits

1.7.13 Replication and the replication crisis

1.7.14 Theory change and paradigm shifts

1.7.15 Consensus, dissent and peer review

1.7.16 Ethics in and around the lab

1.7.17 Assessment bridge: the natural sciences in essay titles

1.8.1 What the human sciences are

1.8.2 The disciplines and their boundaries

1.8.3 Studying people: the reflexivity problem

1.8.4 Operationalising a concept

1.8.5 Experiments on people

1.8.6 Surveys, interviews and self-report

1.8.7 Sampling and representativeness

1.8.8 Correlation, causation and confounds

1.8.9 Statistical significance and what it does not mean

1.8.10 The rationality assumption

1.8.11 Behavioural economics and its lessons

1.8.12 Prediction in the human sciences

1.8.13 Comparing the human and the natural sciences

1.8.14 Replication in the human sciences

1.8.15 The ethics of studying people

1.8.16 Assessment bridge: the human sciences in essay titles

1.9.1 History is not the past

1.9.2 Evidence and the historical record

1.9.3 Primary and secondary sources

1.9.4 Source criticism

1.9.5 Absence of evidence and the missing record

1.9.6 Selection and significance

1.9.7 Narrative and how a history is shaped

1.9.8 Cause and explanation in history

1.9.9 Counterfactuals

1.9.10 Perspective is not bias

1.9.11 Objectivity and the historian's position

1.9.12 Historiography: how histories change

1.9.13 Collective memory and public history

1.9.14 Contested and denied histories

1.9.15 Who owns the past?

1.9.16 Assessment bridge: history in essay titles

1.10.1 What mathematics is about

1.10.2 Axioms, definitions and systems

1.10.3 Proof and deductive certainty

1.10.4 What proof cannot do

1.10.5 Non-Euclidean geometry and axiom choice

1.10.6 Infinity and counterintuitive results

1.10.7 Invented or discovered?

1.10.8 Platonism, formalism and other positions

1.10.9 Beauty and elegance as criteria

1.10.10 Why mathematics works so well in physics

1.10.11 Mathematics as the language of other areas of knowledge

1.10.12 Modelling and idealisation

1.10.13 Statistics: what numbers can and cannot show

1.10.14 Misleading with true numbers

1.10.15 Responsibility for models and algorithms

1.10.16 Assessment bridge: mathematics in essay titles

1.11.1 What counts as art

1.11.2 Definitions of art and why they fail

1.11.3 Institutions and the artworld

1.11.4 Making as knowing

1.11.5 Craft, skill and tacit knowledge

1.11.6 Intention and the artist

1.11.7 Interpretation: whose meaning counts?

1.11.8 The forgery problem

1.11.9 Emotion and aesthetic response

1.11.10 Judgement: is it all subjective?

1.11.11 Criteria, canons and taste

1.11.12 Art as evidence about a society

1.11.13 Art and truth

1.11.14 Censorship and offence

1.11.15 Appropriation in the arts

1.11.16 Assessment bridge: the arts in essay titles