ToK Essay

990 Words2 Pages

We come across and obtain new knowledge everywhere, during every waking moment of our lives. How can we know that knowledge we are obtaining is reliable? Should we consider the limitations placed upon us by our ways of knowing? As humans (and knowers), we have developed a certain tendency to prefer the familiar. Our preference for familiarity has confined our view of the world around us has caused us to get used to thinking in more rigid and literal ways. This quote refers to our inclination to use the ‘ways of knowing’ that we are familiar with using regardless of whether or not they are useful or appropriate to the issue at hand. The hammer is metaphor for any of the ways of knowing and the nail is a metaphor for any problem or knowledge issue that may arise. The problem proposed by Maslow is that we rely way too much on our confirmation bias to solve problems. We are used to believing that doing one thing will lead to another. We think there is one specific solution for each on of the problems we face. A prime example of this is a physicist being faced with some sort of knowledge issue. The physicist will most likely attempt to solve the issue using scientific procedures. On the contrary, an individual with knowledge in the social sciences may tackle the exact same issue but from an entirely different point of view. They both could be right or wrong. They’re simply what their used to doing. Being a psychologist himself, Maslow was frustrated with how the scientific community only validated knowledge that could be quantifiable. He believed that the techniques and ways of knowing that applied to the natural sciences could not always be used to grasp the concepts present in the human sciences (more specifically, psychology). He b...

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... and ignore our limitations rather than focus on them since we are already limited by our ways of knowledge. On the contrary, my proposed ideas highlight the importance of identifying one’s limitations and attempting to make up for them by using a variety of tools to solve a specific problem rather relying on one tool only.
In conclusion, Maslow’s quote is very relevant when looking at ways of knowing as tools used in the pursuit of knowledge. The quote describes how the extent and quality of the knowledge we acquire is reliant on our proper use of a variety of ways of knowing rather than relying on one. It is important for us to realize that one way of knowing may not be suffice to solve a specific problem or issue. If we see that a specific solution cannot be used to solve a specific problem, we do not alter the way we look at the problem, we alter our solution.

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