IB Theory of Knowledge - an ongoing list of interesting finds

In his piece, published in The Guardian, photojournalist Souvid Datta visits refugee camps, the front line, and spends time with Yazidi female fighters.  An insightful look at the effects of ongoing conflict via an artistic storytelling medium. Consider how images and their accompanying captions such as these help to shape the common understanding (shared knowledge) of these events and how they help to shape personal knowledge of the world around us. Photo Essay   (excerpts below) Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers unleash heavy tank fire on Isis fighters lurking in the remains of a recently liberated town near the Khazir river. Kurdish Yazidi women from the Sun Force battalion train in Snuny, near the Syrian border. Two years ago, many of these women were abducted by Isis and kept as sex-slaves during the systematic massacre Isis perpetrated against the Yazidi people. On their escape they enlisted within the Peshmerga's growing minority of female forces, preparing to fi...

In this feature article, Forbes tackles the Fake News phenomenon, having been inspired by the viral story about a Santa Claus actor who held a dying child in his armsb - a powerful holiday story.  As "some of the world’s most prestigious and reputable news outlets took a moment this week to carry the heartwarming story," including CNN, BBC, the Washington Post, and NBC , and ran them alongside articles that highlight to citizens that they need to verify information to protect themselves from "fake news," the article poses questions about these reputable publications and the irresponsibility of reporting . An important question is brought up about the justifications offered after the fact - that it really was the fault of the publication who published the original story, as they should have done the fact-checking, or the "due diligence," themselves. The others simply assumed the story had already been verified, but the concerning result is that via what...

"Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn't happen or remember them differently from the way they really were. It's more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics, and raises some important ethical questions we should all remember to consider." Elizabeth Loftus: How reliable is your memory?

"Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, posed this famous question: If you put a cat in a sealed box with a device that has a 50% chance of killing the cat in the next hour, what will be the state of the cat when that time is up? Chad Orzel investigates this thought experiment." Schrödinger's cat: A thought experiment in quantum mechanics

"What's so special about Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man? With arms outstretched, the man fills the irreconcilable spaces of a circle and a square -- symbolizing the Renaissance-era belief in the mutable nature of humankind. James Earle explains the geometric, religious and philosophical significance of this deceptively simple drawing." Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man of math

"Physicist Werner Heisenberg said, “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.” As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically, we can use art to depict the way it looks. Natalya St. Clair illustrates how Van Gogh captured this deep mystery of movement, fluid and light in his work ." The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

Could it be true that the greatest writer of the English language is as fictional as his plays?  A look at stylometry - characteristics of literary authorship . "Some people question whether Shakespeare really wrote the works that bear his name – or whether he even existed at all. Could it be true that the greatest writer in the English language was as fictional as his plays? Natalya St. Clair and Aaron Williams show how a linguistic tool called stylometry might shed light on the answer." Did Shakespeare write his plays?

"Michael Jordan’s legendary slam dunk from the free throw line has been calculated at 0.92 seconds of pure hang time. But how many seconds could Jordan have gotten were he doing the same jump on Mars? Or Jupiter? Andy Peterson and Zack Patterson share the math equation behind hang time." The math behind Michael Jordan’s legendary hang time

"The world turns on symmetry -- from the spin of subatomic particles to the dizzying beauty of an arabesque. But there's more to it than meets the eye. Here, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy offers a glimpse of the invisible numbers that marry all symmetrical objects. Oxford's newest science ambassador Marcus du Sautoy is also author of The Times' Sexy Maths column. He'll take you footballing with prime numbers, whopping symmetry groups, higher dimensions and other brow-furrowers." Symmetry, reality's riddle

Stanford University's History Education Group considers the question of multiperspectivity (exploring multiple perspectives) in history. It addresses that, in the academic world, the approach has shifted towards a critical, questioning and considerate approach to studying history. "In recent decades scholars and educators have begun to question the validity of singular (one-sided) historical narratives. Instead of just focusing on dominant groups and communities, they recommend employing multiple perspectives. One reason for this stems from increasing diversity and cultural pluralism, since many groups—women, the poor, ethnic minorities, etc.—have been ignored in traditional historical narratives." Multiperspectivity

A post about how the general assumption has always been that humans can set themselves apart from the animal world and at times, each other) because of our ability to rationalize and reason.  This blog explores the myth surrounding this idea and offers insight into the psychology of decision-making that suggests reason is not our sole influence. 'We like to think of ourselves as special because we can reason and we like to think that this ability expresses the essence of what it is to be human. In many ways this belief has formed our civilization; throughout history, we have used supposed differences in rationality to justify moral and political distinctions between different races, genders, and species, as well as between “healthy” and “diseased” individuals...After decades of research, there is compelling evidence that we are not as rational as we think we are and that, rather than irrationality being the exception, it is part of who we normally are.' The Irrationality Wi...

A piece focused on the editing of historical photographs that illustrate the extent to which world leaders will go to "erase" those who they deem to be traitors or dishonorable. The details are reminiscent of George Orwell's haunting dystopian fiction, Nineteen-Eighty Four , where the narrator is explaining what happens to those who do not follow the suffocating rules of the totalitarian society: "In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, you one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished annihilated: VAPORIZED was the usual word." 6 People Who Were Literally Erased From History

This piece offers an interesting look at the ethics of decision-making and information-sharing during wartime.   It centres on the discoveries being made that shift our understanding of the "facts" surrounding the famous sinking of the Lusitania during the first world war. According to the column, the recent discovery of government papers confirm that the ship "was carrying munitions and therefore a legitimate target when it was sunk by a German submarine in May 1915."   The journalist, Saul David, continues to explore the reasoning and justification of lies duirng wartime, claiming in this case that the " truth was kept hidden in 1915 because the British government wanted to use the sinking of a non-military ship, and the loss of 1,198 lives, as an example of German ruthlessness."  David further explores how these lies are essentially inevitable, but that ultimately, people do need access to the truth.  The Lusitania and the secrets of war, revealed

NY Times explores the controversy surrounding the fake news phenomenon, both in terms of why it is so appealing to some, while so dangerous to others. "Fake news, and the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news, is creating confusion,  punching holes in what is true, causing a kind of fun-house effect that leaves the reader doubting everything, including real news. That has pushed up the political temperature and increased polarization." In News, What's Fake and What's Real Can Depend on What You Want to Believe

In this piece, NPR covers the findings of researchers at Stanford University where they ' evaluated students' ability to assess information sources and described the results as "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy."'  Students apparently showed ' "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again.' Some of the findings included in the study claim that: Most middle school students can't tell native ads from articles. Most high school students accept photographs as presented, without verifying them. Many high school students couldn't tell a real and fake news source apart on Facebook. Most college students didn't suspect potential bias in a tweet from an activist group. An interesting and slightly disturbing look at something that many adults simply take for granted - that those growing up in the digital age are media literate. ...

"History is the story of human error battling plaguesome if not overwhelming structural forces, and things generally not going as well as we wish they might have...To tell the sunnier story is a slide toward futility and perhaps a kind of insanity, a march into a circus mirror. ... Forcing the happy story means embracing delusions..." Can Honest History Allow for Hope?

In this photo essay , CNN presents the images and poignant captions of their top 25 most iconic photographs ever taken.  From influential people, to those representative of a historical moment or experience. WARNING - There are some graphic and disturbing images in this collection.  25 of the most iconic photographs

"Non-stop imagery (television, streaming video, movies) surrounds us, but, when it comes to remembering, the photograph has the deeper bite." Another piece about the significant emotional and empathetic impact of "looking"  at disturbing images of the human experience  (see previous post entitled " The NewYorker - THE POWER OF LOOKING, FROM EMMETT TILL TO PHILANDO CASTILE ").  This lengthy feature article offers insight into the significant role photography plays in documenting war and experiences of "devastation and death." Looking at War

" What started as a quest to map the sophisticated acoustics of ancient churches could end up preserving and replicating forgotten noises from across the planet." In this article, researchers set out to analyze the acoustics within Byzantine era churches in an attempt to hear  the sounds associated with the art of the time period.  The detailed piece outlines the strategies and findings of the research and offers the realization that there can be a piece of the past found in the present and that history can, in fact, be "heard." Hearing the Lost Sounds of Antiquity

" When you look back across the history of art, things go missing. Interesting things."  Vanished! The Surprising Things Missing From Ancient Art

In this piece,  Allyson Hobbs ( journalist and assistant history professor at Standford), explores her personal views on using graphic historical images in the classroom - " Early in my teaching career, I made a conscious choice not to include photographs of lynchings in my course materials...  My concern was that, if we merely looked at photographs of lynchings, we risked being complicit in those terrible acts, in their attempts to rob their victims not just of life but also of dignity, honor, and, above all, privacy. I worried that we couldn’t help but be voyeurs, observing spectacles rather than bearing witness to atrocities." Hobbs' article discusses how in two key US lynchings - the murder of 14-year old Emmett Till in 1955 and the recent murder of Philando Castile, whose death was captured on video and went viral - decisions were made to force people to "look" at what had happened.  Hobbs presents her realization that there is a definite emotional and ra...

This opinion column begins by addressing the controversy surrounding the McGraw Hill world-geography textbook and claim that African slaves had gone to the US to " work on agricultural plantations,"  then uses this issue to explore a seemingly wider problem - the way in which language is used in the retelling of history (specifically in Texas).  It is an interesting piece on the ways in which language can be specifically manipulated for a particular effect, and how that might shade or change the ways in which people respond to historical "facts." How Texas Teaches History

In this opinion column, Erna Solberg, the Prime Minister of Norway, voices her frustration and concerns over the removal of an iconic historic image from her Facebook page. Her column addresses issues of censorship as well as corporate control over the sharing (or removal) of historical information. It is an interesting look at rights and responsibilities in an increasingly digital age. Facebook had no right to edit history