Activities
Historical Method
The historical method bears some similarity to some of the methods of science, although the obvious difference is that historical events are in the past and not directly accessible so there is no possibility...
Activities
What is history?
History as an area of knowledge is different from the past. This is a problem because in ordinary speech we sometimes use the word ‘history’ to mean the past. In ToK you need to unlearn this! History...
Activities
What do historians do?
This is a fun lesson that allows you to learn about the methodology of History by doing it - although you may not realise that you are doing it! It needs nothing more than paper and pencil and some curious...
Activities
Final reflection on Natural Sciences
This is an activity designed to pull together all the strands of the module. Because the module is complex there are many terms that have been introduced to help students think about the natural sciences....
Activities
Ethics in the Natural Sciences
This is an extended, creative activity that seeks to immerse students in difficult questions about scientific ethics. Arguably science would advance more quickly if there were no restrictions on the kinds...
Activities
Social perspectives in Science
These activities are designed to generate thoughts about the role of different perspectives in science. If science is supposed to tell us about the world then how can there be different perspectives?...
Activities
Progress in the Natural Sciences
Perhaps we take it for granted that we make progress in the sciences. Afterall, Aristotle thought that there were four elements, and that we used the heart to think with. Now a ninth grade student can...
Activities
Distinguishing science from pseudoscience
There are some practices that pretend to be scientific but actually fail the requirements for being any kind of knowledge at all. These are called pseudoscience. Examples are astrology - that supposes...
Activities
The challenges of doing science
These activities explore the challenges faced by the natural sciences in terms of the methods that are used. These challenges may ultimately lead to limitations in the knowledge that science can produce....
eBook
Knowledge and responsibility
In ToK the Ethics part of the knowledge framework is best understood in terms of the responsibility of different knowledge stakeholders (see Knowledge Stakeholders). On this page, we look at these different...