The most frequent mistake that I see in both ToK Presentations and Essays is students talking / writing about their RLS rather than about ToK. Many presentations and essays are great Psychology, Biology or History presentations/essays, but they’re not about ToK. This type of mistake shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what ToK is all about. In this post I will try to show the differences between questions about RLS and questions about knowledge (KQ’s):
RLS Q: Do dreams really exist ?
KQ: Is the methodology of Human Sciences adequate to research non-tangible phenomena ?
RLSQ: Should countries open their borders ?
KQ: Are there unifying characteristics in the development of ethical principles ?
RLSQ: Why do experts disagree on climate change ?
KQ: How do we increase the reliability of models of dynamic systems ?
RLS: The perceived clash between secular and faith based societies.
KQ: Does Religious Knowledge necessarily preclude contrasting perspectives in order to increase validity ?
RLSQ: The boundaries between sport and art.
KC: It is impossible to define art in terms of the object, all art is defined by the viewer.
RLSQ: Growing income disparity between urban and rural dwellers.
KQ: Do human sciences lose the validity of the individual when describing the general ?
RLSQ: Low wages leading to low motivation levels in the workplace.
KQ: Are AoK Human Sciences and AoK Natural Sciences inextricably linked ?
RLS: The Hawthorne factory studies on motivation in 1958
KQ: How do Researchers reduce their effect on the research process, and the results obtained ?