IB Theory of Knowledge 2.12.13 IA Prompt 13: How Can We Know That Current Knowledge Is an Improvement Upon Past Knowledge? Notes

2.12.13 IA prompt 13: How can we know that current knowledge is an improvement upon past knowledge?

What the prompt asks

1. Take the wording as it stands and keep it: How can we know that current knowledge is an improvement upon past knowledge? Your title carries that sentence unedited, punctuation included.
2. Examine the grounds for calling current knowledge an improvement upon past knowledge. A case in which knowledge improved can help, provided you explain how that improvement was established.
3. Fix the dates and knowers in your comparison. Identify the current account and the earlier knowledge you are comparing it with; the newer account may extend rather than replace the older one.
4. Improvement is comparative and therefore needs a dimension: accuracy of prediction, scope of application, resolution, coherence with neighbouring knowledge, usefulness in practice. Two dimensions can return opposite verdicts on the same pair.
5. Improvement can also be claimed for different things: a device, a method, a classification, or a body of results. A finer instrument on its own does not settle anything, because somebody still has to use it well.
6. You can explore this prompt in any area of knowledge. In each case, explain what improvement would mean before judging whether it occurred.

Change is not improvement until a standard says so, and you must pick the standard

1. Change is a fact about two states of affairs. Improvement is a judgement passed on that change using a criterion, and a commentary that skips the criterion asserts precisely what it was supposed to argue.
2. General relativity gives a wider account of gravitation, while Newtonian calculations remain useful approximations for many everyday tasks. In a bridge-design context, ask whether extra theoretical precision would improve the calculation enough to justify its complexity. Accuracy and workability need not favour the same approach.
3. A transition may also lose something: a craft skill, a local classification of plants or a technique nobody recorded. If you claim an overall improvement, investigate relevant losses as well as gains.
4. This is why an object that states its own standard is worth hunting for. A specification, a tolerance table, an accuracy figure or a rule book has the criterion printed on it, and your commentary can argue with something concrete.
5. Ask where the criterion came from. If current knowers chose it, consider whether it gives the newer account an advantage by definition or tests a purpose both accounts shared.

How can current knowers judge the comparison?

1. We judge the past using tools and assumptions available to us now, but can also examine earlier criteria and records. Ask whether your chosen standard tests improvement or assumes the newer account is better.
2. An earlier prediction can be tested against a later observation. Compare an almanac's predicted eclipse with the recorded event, while checking the accuracy of that record too. Agreement with an outcome offers more than similarity to current opinion.
3. Judging an earlier classification only by how closely it resembles ours risks making improvement a matter of similarity. Explain what independent reason makes the current arrangement preferable.
4. Practical success and agreement between independently developed methods can also support a comparison. Ask whether the success tests the claim at issue and how independent the methods were.
5. Those tests can support reliability for a stated purpose without settling every claim made by a theory. Keep the conclusion within the evidence you have examined.
6. Use your objects to test the comparison. If the same concern about current standards recurs, explain what each case adds rather than repeating the objection.

Object bank

1. An almanac from a stated year, held by a library or still in your family, open at a page of predictions. Its context is the year, the publisher and the sailors, farmers or astronomers who worked from it.
2. A periodic-table poster at school, identified by publisher and printing date. An older chart may use temporary names for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118. IUPAC approved their permanent names in November 2016; compare the actual entries before deciding what changed.
3. A mercury-in-glass clinical thermometer kept at home, with its scale visible. Identify when and how the household used it, and compare its measurement limits with those of a later instrument.
4. The flood or land-use map your local authority published in a given year, obtainable from its planning office or website. Its context is the district it governed and the floods that came afterwards.
5. One of your own school exercise books from an earlier year, open at a marked answer you now know to be wrong. Its context is the class, the year and the teaching you had at the time.
6. A slide rule at home or in a school collection, with its scales and provenance identified. A typical ten-inch linear slide rule gives roughly three significant figures, though precision varies with its design and use.

Judging the past fairly: what its knowers could check with what they had

1. Ask what evidence earlier knowers could gather and what their instruments could resolve. A conclusion later shown wrong may still have been reasonable given the evidence available at the time.
2. Distinguish a wrong result from a weakness in the method. A wrong result may reveal such a weakness, but compare the procedures and evidence before concluding that the newer method is better.
3. A method may improve by detecting errors sooner, extending the range of cases it handles or making its checks easier to repeat. State which change your object documents and why it warrants the judgement.
4. Watch for reading an earlier category as a clumsy draft of ours. A scheme that sorted plants by what they were used for was answering a question about use, and it is not a failed attempt at sorting them by descent.
5. If earlier knowers set evidence aside, investigate their reasons and whether that affected the result. A recorded dissent can help, but it does not by itself establish that the present approach avoids the same problem.
6. Give enough context to explain what earlier knowers could check before judging the improvement. Support the comparison with their available evidence and the later findings.

The linkability test, worked

1. For each comparison, identify the standard, the evidence about the earlier and current knowledge, and who applies the standard. Organise those points around the object; there is no required opening order.
2. On the periodic table, one standard is whether the chart reflects agreed names. IUPAC approved nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson on 28 November 2016. Their discoveries had already been recognised in December 2015, so changing temporary names to permanent ones is not itself a new discovery.
3. Now ask whether the new labels improve explanation of chemical behaviour or mainly standardise communication. Compare what the two charts contain; a naming update alone does not establish a better chemical explanation.
4. For the almanac, you could compare the accuracy of predictions from earlier and current methods against records of the same events. Explain why the observations are reliable enough to test both.
5. For your exercise book, identify how you now judge the earlier answer. If later teaching supplies the standard, explain the evidence or reasoning that justifies that standard rather than assuming your newer answer must be right.
6. Objects assessed by the same authority can still contribute different points. Check whether each justification explains a distinct way of establishing or questioning improvement.

Failure modes on this prompt

1. Narrating progress without explaining why it counts as improvement. A timeline can show change, but connect it to the standard and evidence behind your judgement.
2. Letting current knowledge win because it is current. Explain what the newer account does better, and how you know, rather than treating its date as evidence of superiority.
3. Changing standards without explanation. Different objects may test accuracy, usefulness or coherence; make the reasons for those choices explicit and show how each helps answer the same prompt.
4. Overlooking a relevant loss. If a technique has fallen out of use, investigate which knowledge it preserved and whether that knowledge survives elsewhere before treating it as lost.
5. Mistaking a faster device for improved knowledge. Speed may change which questions can be investigated, but explain and support that further connection.
6. The last is smoothing the prompt. Writing better than past knowledge in place of an improvement upon past knowledge feels like the same question and is not the wording on the list, and the list is what your title has to match.