Red lines and “complex moral duality”: TOK and ethics of witnessing

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“Civilians Attacked by Chemical Weapons!” Few headlines spark as much outrage. If a TOK class engages students in the questions of knowledge connected with this kind of horrendous event, it can help them feel the importance of the intellectual tools that the course provides for probing into – and reacting to – such events. A reflective piece in the current edition […]

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Conspiracy theories, intuitions and critical thinking: Part 1

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Did you know that the Charlie Hebdou attack was not, as the media tell us, an attack by terrorists offended by the satiric magazines’ portrayal of Muhammed, the Prophet? Did you know, rather, that it was orchestrated by the U.S. in order to punish France for its foreign policy decisions? Did you know that pop star Kate Perry is, in fact, a member of the Illuminati , bent on world […]

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“Evidence Based Medicine”: WOK Language and AOK Natural Sciences

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(Originally posted on Activating TOK) When we depend on language to mediate scientific knowledge, the field is ripe for misunderstanding and abuse.  And when life and death are involved, as they often are in medical science, getting it right is important. Hence the attempts of prominent figures who straddle both fields — medical science and communication (e.g. David Gorski, Stephen […]

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Mathematics and Scientific Methodology: example Malaria

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(Originally posted on Activating TOK)  The statistics are horrifying.  Every minute, a child dies from malaria. In 2013, 90% of the world’s malaria deaths occurred in Africa and over 430,000 African children died before their fifth birthdays. And there are plenty more statistics  where these came from : In 2013, there were about 198 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty […]

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