TOK Paper on Is seeing believing? Or is believing seeing?
IB Essay: Is seeing believing? Or is believing seeing?
The concept of belief can be drawn from two distinct sources: what enters the body externally through the senses and what already resides internally in the individual. All five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting, are important in developing thoughts and ideas, but the sense of sight typically sets itself above the others in its effectiveness at creating strong and lasting beliefs. Many times in life, the sense of sight is used to give evidence that will determine what is believed. Logically, believing what you see makes sense. The knowledge is experienced first hand or, as Bertrand Russell would define the term, knowledge by acquaintance. However, at times when a person assumes that they are basing their belief on sight, they are really allowing themselves to see what they already internally believe. The mind can be made to see something in a certain way simply because the belief that it is so is present. Therefore, while seeing conditions what we believe, in the same sense believing also conditions what we see.
The natural sciences, for example biology, rely heavily on sight to lend evidence concerning what to believe. When watching cell division through a microscope, a biologist is able to physically see the cells divide and pass through the various stages of prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Therefore, the biologist then believes that when cells are moving about in the manner observed in the microscope, they are dividing. After actually seeing cell division, the biologist believes in the observed fashion of division. Through the sense of sight, external information has been taken in and transformed into a belief.
However, at times scientists believe that they are seeing cell division when could be seeing something else. The biologist could be seeing a mutated cell, a small, moving cell, or simply something other than a cell. In this case, the biologist would be allowing his or her previously acquired internal beliefs to interfere with what is actually happening. As a result of believing that if cells are moving in a certain format, they are dividing, the biologist sees cell division. Although the process being observed may not be cell division, the biologist sees cell division because he or she believes it to be cell division.
In mathematics, the dilemma between seeing and believing is also present. If a series of steps designed to solve...