Tok Essay

Question: “It is more important to discover new ways of thinking about what is already known than to discover new data or facts. To what extent would you agree with this claim?” According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, data can be defined as factual information used as basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation. By the same dictionary, fact is defined as a piece of information presented as having objective reality. In this essay, it is vital to distinguish that the issue the question addresses is whether discovering new ways of thinking about what is already known is more important that discovering new data or facts, rather than which is important. The phrase “new ways of thinking”, though, proves to be debatable. This is because, new ways of thinking can be observed when a particular information is analyzed through a new or different perspective. However, no one person inteprets any fact or data in a similar manner, every one thinks in a different way. Hence, we can say that every one thinks in a new way and that not just any one person thinks so. The knowledge issue that this essay will explore is how important of a role does discovering new ways of reasoning plays in discovering new data or facts in sciences. In the past century itself, the field of science, both natural and human, has been explored and been developed immensely. There is always a new breakthrough in the Areas of Knowledge, like the Keynesian models in Macroeconomics or the structure of the current Periodic Table by Mendeleev. However, what is responsible for these developments? Do the scientists’ radical ways of reasoning and analyzation of existing knowledge lead to new data or facts? Or is the other way around? My argument is that new ways of thinking lead to discovery of new facts and data. One such example from the natural sciences is the Periodic Table of Elements, by Mendeleev. The Russian chemistry professor Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev and German Chemist Julius Luthar