May 2027 Reading List
As work on unpacking the May 2027 TOK prescribed titles gathers pace, I have put together a reading list for you and your students. These articles offer perspectives that may help students develop their own judgments and explore the questions more confidently.
The TOK essay is not a research essay, but a little reading can help ease the initial uncertainty and make a challenging title feel more approachable. If your students would benefit from a starting point, please share this list with them - it is not directly available to them.
Disclaimer: These articles do not directly answer the prescribed title, but they may help prompt or deepen thinking. Students should consider their relevance carefully to avoid drifting off-topic. Some examples are also rather clichéd; students are encouraged to draw on examples they understand well, ideally from their own experiences or classroom learning.
This list is also neither complete nor does it consider all possible perspectives. If you find an article worth sharing, please add it in the comments.
- Aeon - The power of story
- Aeon - Changed by art
- Aeon - The empathetic humanities have much to teach our adversarial culture
- Aeon - At the altar
- Aeon - The politics of pain
- Aeon - Comics offer radical opportunity to blend scholarship and art
- The Guardian - Hilary Mantel: why I became a historical novelist
- The Guardian - Students take Hilary Mantel's Tudor novels as fact, says historian
- Julie Owen Moylan - Historian or novelist? Writing fiction based on facts
- Julianne Chiaet - Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy
- Walter G. Moss - Historians Need to Write and Teach with Empathy
- Kate Keller - The Issue on the Table: Is “Hamilton” Good For History?
- Lisa Florman - Guernica and the Horrors of Modern War
- Science Daily - Although trust in science remains high, public questions scientists' adherence to science's norms
- Science Daily - Global Science Community Affirms Its Responsibilities In Science And Its Role In Society
- Science Daily - From compliance to conversation: New guidelines push for ethical reflection in research reporting
- Melnyk, A. (2022). An interpretation of value change: A philosophical disquisition of climate change and energy transition debate. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 47(3), 404–428. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439211068040
- Douglas, H. (2023). The importance of values for science. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 48(2), 251–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2023.2191559
- Christine Bachrach - So Many Ways: How Values Affect Science
- Aeon - The route to progress
- The New York Times - Smithsonian to Return Most of Its Benin Bronze Collection to Nigeria - see also Benin Bronzes returned
- The Guardian - Psychiatrist who championed 'gay cure' admits he was wrong
- Medium - How art’s value system has shifted over the century
- Wikipedia - ValueTheory (to acknowledge there are different sets of values)
- Aeon - How do you know?
- Aeon - Not so foolish
- Aeon - Who knows what
- Aeon - Economics 101
- Aeon - A model world
- UC Berkeley - Basic assumptions of science
- Science Daily - Psychological research conducted in 'WEIRD' nations may not apply to global populations
- Evelyn Lamb - Chasing the Parallel Postulate
- Quanta Magazine - Why Mathematical Proof Is a Social Compact
- See also How do mathematicians do their thing?
- Quanta Magazine - Moonshine Master Toys With String Theory
- Aeon - What are the chances?
- Aeon - Why things happen
- APS News - Discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background
- Aeon - Gravitational wave blues
- Scientific American - How String Theory Solved Math’s Monstrous Moonshine Problem
- Aeon - On Coincidence
- Science Daily - Serendipitous backyard experiment shines light on producing polymers
- Science Daily - Research in yeast leads to serendipitous finding about a central nervous system disorder
- Live Science - What is Occam's razor?
- Britannica - Occam’s razor
- Aeon - Why is simpler better?
- Aeon - Life in hollow Earth
- Aeon - Beauty ≠ truth
- Aeon - Richard Feynman was wrong about beauty and truth in science
- Aeon - Aha = wow
- Aeon - The eye of the mathematician
- Prospect - Occam’s razor and the limits of simplicity
- Scientific American - Contrary to Occam’s Razor, the Simplest Explanation Is Often Not the Best One
- Quanta Magazine - The Four-Color Theorem Gets a Rare New Proof
- Quanta Magazine - Mathematician Proves Huge Result on ‘Dangerous’ Problem
- Aeon - Physics’s pangolin
- Aeon - At the limits of thought
- Smithsonian Magazine - The Physics of Why Hot Water Sometimes Freezes Faster Than Cold Water
- Aeon - Negative capability
- Aeon - What if?
- The British Psychological Society - 10 of The Most Counter-Intuitive Psychology Findings Ever Published
- Bert Olivier - The paradoxes of art
- Audra J. Wolfe - What Was the “Paradigm Shift”?
- Andrew Allentuck - How past plagues have affected economies
- Aeon - Through two doors
- Tara Fortier - 5 Concepts Can Help You Understand Quantum Mechanics and Technology — Without Math!
- Bold - Helping students overcome misconceptions in science and maths
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