Theory of Knowledge Essay (Psychology) Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Theory of Knowledge (Psychology) - Essay Example Some studies have been carried out to establish how knowledge is gained, how it can be used, when can knowledge be said to be knowledge indeed, should truth be factored in knowledge etc. These factors considered in the study of knowledge consists a branch of philosophy called Theory of Knowledge (ToK). ToK as Bertrand Russell (1926) puts it is a product of doubt. He further asserts that only when you subject facts, concepts etc into sufficient doubt then you can know whether the facts, concepts etc can be said to be true and thus become knowledge. In other words knowledge is not knowledge if it isn’t true and facts, concepts, principles etc graduate to knowledge once they reach the threshold of truth. Therefore ToK ventures into four ways of knowing i.e. through emotion, language, perception (use of senses) and through reason. It also features the areas of knowledge such as Science, Arts, Mathematics, history etc while investigating how students, the actors of knowledge, gain knowledge. This paper seeks to discuss the fact that an area of knowledge is not necessarily a collection of facts. An area of knowledge, be it science or mathematics, is not a mere collection of facts even though collection of facts constitute an area of knowledge (Lehrer, 2000). Science is dependent on facts that can be ascertained to be true. A number of facts describe science. The philosophy of science entails two parts. The first part is about the process of acquiring scientific knowledge (Scientific in the sense that it can be tested and ascertained scientifically) and the second part is about the purpose, implications and uses of the scientific knowledge acquired. One most important thing to note is the fact that the facts that make up science should have a way to be tested. Therefore, an accumulation of facts alone do not make science but if the facts can be tested scientifically and ascertained, then they qualify to constitute