Tok paper

“Using history and at least one other area of knowledge, examine the claim that it is possible to attain knowledge despite problems of bias and selection.” Knowledge is a broad subject that can all be brought down to the one simple definition of facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education. This definition is simple, to the point and comes with relatively little bias. Bias is prejudice in favor of or against one thing which falls under the category of personal feelings. Everybody views everything they see with their own personal bias yet many of the things they view are cold hard facts in which no bias is possible in the immediate presentation of the raw fact. The perception of human being as to how they view and portray the fact shows the cognitive bias that comes along with anything and everything that can be examined. The Areas of Knowledge that I feel best represent the issue of whether knowledge is attainable without the problem of bias and selections are History and Mathematics. Mathematics can be clearly defined as the knowledge to know how to solve something which is a form of declarative knowledge which is factual information stored in memory and known to be static in nature. There is no possible way to say that 2+2 is not equal to 4 which is completely unbiased because one cannot reason for the answer being 17 as that is clearly not true. The bias here comes along which deducing the BEST way to attain this value. One student may insist that the use of a calculator is the best way to find that the answer is 4 while another insists that mental math is the best while a third can be set on the idea that writing it down is the way to go. At the end of the day, the knowledge that the answer is 4 and not 17 is cold hard declarative knowledge that cannot really be reasoned to be susceptible to bias. As mathematics becomes more and more complex and many different theories and formulas come in to play, the opportunities