TOK first written assignment

Farah Amayreh

TOK WRITING ASSIGNMENT (Be succinct, but explain yourself carefully… Explore: I want to read your thoughts not some, closed definitive response… Contradictions may emerge. If they do I want to read about them

1. Imagine that you have sole responsibility to teach a coordinated five-year-old to ride a bicycle for the first time, without training wheels, in a twenty-minute window of time. Briefly, what would you say? What would you do? [4 points] 2. Would the following advice help you at all in your attempt to teach the child to balance? Give reasons. "For a given angle of unbalance, the curvature of each winding is inverse y proportional to the square of the speed…" [4 points]

The first thing i’m going to tell them to wear a helmet because safety is the most important thing. Then i’m going to tell the kid to to paddle with a steady pace in a straight line. I am then going to tell them to just set themselves free and explore the world. They shouldn't be scared of failure.

2. Would the following advice help you at all in your attempt to teach the child to balance? Give reasons. "For a given angle of unbalance, the curvature of each winding is inverse y proportional to the square of the speed…" [4 points]

The only part of my answer that has a scientific explanation behind it is paddling in a straight line with a steady pace. The physics of it is called “gyroscopic effect” which is a term meaning “A freely-rotating disk (rotor), mounted onto a spinning axis in the center of a larger and more stable wheel, when axis turns rotor remains stationary to show the gravitational pull which way is down.”. This effect is mainly created for moving objects like cars, planes and bikes because it is used to “find the rate of rotation and the angular position.It moves in a peculiar way which defies gravity, It makes the gyroscope effect extremely crucial from bicycle to the advance navigation system of the space shuttle.”

3. Does a male obstetrician know less or more about childbirth than a teenage mother who has just given birth to twins without pain-relieving drugs? [4 points]

I think the male obstetrician knows more because he has the knowledge rather than the experience. The obstetrician does not need to know how childbirth feels to explain the details and science behind it. The mother who went through childbirth might not know the science or the exact details of every part of childbirth since she is the one experiencing the event.

4 . In a single sentence distil what we can say about the difference between knowledge by direct experience (knowing how) and theoretical, propositional knowledge (knowing that). Base this on some or all of what you have just written. [8 points]

Knowledge is knowing something by studying and analyzing every aspect of something in detail while direct experience is only undergoing that something.  Theoretical knowledge is something we can’t falsify unless a group of people undergo something and prove a fact false; however it isn’t always reliable or useful in my opinion because it can say something without having an explanation or evidence behind it. In the meantime, propositional knowledge relies on evidence and explanation which i think is more reliable.