Tag Archives: explanation

“Really? You don’t know what MATTER is?”: Nobel Laureate in physics uses doughnuts to explain.

(from OUP TOK blog) In just a minute and a half on a comedy show, Arthur McDonald explains the discovery in physics that made him a co-winner of a Nobel Prize for physics this month. Well, actually…..no, he doesn’t. But he does provoke a laugh, perhaps especially for Canadians who recognize the popular chocolate Timbits he resorts to using in a simplified explanation. I recommend this video clip for TOK class for two reasons: first, a class laugh opens discussion of scientific discovery without distancing those fearful of physics; and second, it raises some tasty knowledge questions about the nature of explanation and responsibility.   Continue reading

how wolves change rivers: variables and causation

(by Eileen Dombrowski, from TOK OSC blog Feb 22, 2014) This four and a half minute video, with splendid filming of animals in Yellowstone National Park in the USA, could be effective in a TOK class on the topic of the search for cause in the natural and human sciences: Continue reading

TOK and counter-factual history

chessman-300x225(by Theo Dombrowski, OSC TOK blog, May 15, 2015) “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Ho hum? Heard this before? In the first place, this famous “quotation” is apparently a distortion–albeit a slight distortion–from George Santayana’s actual assertion, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” More to the point, the statement raises important questions about the nature of historical knowledge. Continue reading