TOK Essay on Humans Are Unaware
Humans are not aware of their assumptions or basic beliefs, much as fish are unaware of the water in which they live.
In the never-ending human quest of knowledge and truth, there is one certainty which serves as the foundation for all intellectual growth and progress. This certainty is that in life, and therefore in the intellectual outpourings of mankind, there lies a certain degree of bias. Although one who professes to be conscious of this bias attempts to remove it, this can never be done. The reason is very simple. Any new knowledge gained by an individual is gained usually through logical proof of a fact. The logical proof must follow certain steps in order for it to be considered true, and these steps are definitely pre-established by the society in which this man lives. The society makes these basic rules and pre-assumptions for the logical proof to follow because the people within society are the ones who must accept the conclusions of the proof. The problem arises in this situation when the society and the man who proves a "fact" to the society becomes completely oblivious to any assumptions, especially those that are incorrect, and use them to "prove their fact."
Although one at first asks how anyone can have a wrong assumption, then prove a fact based upon this assumption, it really is quite simple, and people have been doing it for hundreds of years. For example, in the world view of geography during the 1300's and 1400's, there was a basic assumption made about the shape of the earth. Most people at that time thought that the earth was a flat area, and had an end to it. Understandably, these people could only see as far as the horizon, so they made this assumption. Although modern geographers have proven that the earth is indeed round instead of flat, this did not stop earlier societies from subscribing to the flat earth theory. From this basic assumption, these people went on to develop theories telling what would happen to those unfortunate souls who reached the "end" of the earth. Those who dared to venture into the unknown territory were sure to fall clear off the face of the planet, never to be heard from again. In fact, the explorer credited for discovering the New World, Christopher Columbus, did not have many followers or believers. Many people who heard of his...