Every artwork was produced by some reason. Some are the experience artist suffered, some artworks were used to pass the emotion artist wanted other people know. Whatever the reasons artist created artworks for, they are all about artist and what happened on him. For example, we all know the artwork of Picasso in which called Guernica. It was created after Spanish Civil War, and it showed the perspective Picasso held to the war. He created it to provoke people to keep the peace  after the Civil War. If we don’t know the context of Guernica, it even can’t called artwork. It doesn’t have tiny details, strong colour, and vivid figures. When I first saw it, I laughed at it and really didn’t understand why it is a great artwork. After I know the context of this artwork, I know that it was created for war and provoke peace, and then I got the reason why it is a good artwork.

From my experience, I learned that if you want to know an artwork. But the reason we know the context of an artwork is not used to claim that we have knowledge of that artworks. Knowing the context and artist can help us to gain the knowledge of the artwork. But if we know the context of an artwork, it only means we know the context of the artworks instead of knowing the whole artwork or the knowledge of an artwork. For example, using the same artwork I mentioned above in which is Guernica as the start of explanation. I already said that this artwork was created after Spanish Civil War, many innocent citizens died for it. Picasso experienced it and saw the horrifying death of thousands of citizens. I already say all the context and background information of Guernica, but is that the knowledge of it? As for me, the knowledge of Guernica is the idea that Picasso wanted to provoke peace after war and warned the offspring. We know the motivation of creating that artwork because we know the context of it and we can see the painful figures and death in the painting. Only know the context of an artwork is not mean knowing the knowledge of it.

In conclusion, context of an artwork is an important factor to gaining the knowledge of that artwork. But if we only the context of it, we can’t see that we have the knowledge of that artworks.

Ways of Knowing in Fortress Besieged

Fortress Besieged was written by Qian Zhongshu, published in 1947, and is widely considered one of the masterpieces of twentieth century Chinese literature. The novel is a humorous tale about middle-class Chinese society in the late 1930s. The book was begun while Qian Zhongshu and his wife Yang Jiang were living in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation.

 

I read it for my extended essay. After finishing reading, I found that it is really interesting book and reflects some characteristics of Chinese society. Surely, there are some ways of knowing appears in the different sections of book.

 

Sense perception plays an important role. Sense perception as the main ways of knowing in Chinese society in modern times also shows the negative aspects of Chinese cultural in which author against. For example, the main character of this book Fang Hongjian told the girl who loves him that he isn’t so sure that they can get married, he has to go to meet the girl his family like. In ancient China, free marriage was not allowed from society and it was appalling if a couple do it. Fang Hongjian finally rejects the girl who loves him because his sense perception tells him that they can’t get married.

 

Another ways of knowing I found in the book is emotion. When Fang Hongjian owns his first formal job in which is a philosophy professor of a new founded college. He goes to the college but there is no philosophy major in the first year. So that head teacher lets him help English professor to teach English. After he is “demoted”, he found that the people who come with him together change their attitude and emotion when they talk with him. The change of emotion makes him know that he is disparaged from other people, so he doesn’t talk to his colleague and it makes him doesn’t have other friends.

 

In addition, reason is the other ways of knowing in which appear in the book. Fang Hongjian knows that he is disparaged from other people because his academic diploma is fake.

 

All in all, there are many ways of knowing are explored in this book, and they play different roles under different situations.

“I used to think… now I think” for Language as a Way of Knowing

I used to think that language has the most important position as a way of knowing, we can’t communicate or learning without language. It makes sense because we get most knowledge from teacher and parents by teaching us in language. In the last class, we had a competition of building a highest free-standing tower, but we can’t talk during the competition. When the competition began, I want to talk to Daphne my idea, and then I realized that I can’t talk. So I just fold the paper to show my idea to them. Then Daphne showed me her idea to me, I thought it is better than mine. After negotiating by gesture, we decided to use her idea. During the competition, we used gesture to finish all the necessary conversation we need. To be honest, we didn’t misunderstand other people by using gestures. On the contrary, it was pretty favoring and helpful. This competition did change my mind in a way in which I started to think that maybe language is not so foremost as I thought before. After reading this chapter, I found that symbol and some signs are able to provide good communication. For instance, if there is a “P” sign, we know that we can park car here. It is simple but really efficient. In addition, this chapter reminds me that deaf people can use sign language to chat, blind people also can use braille book to read. Now I think language is a significant and foremost way of communication or get knowledge, but there are still some other ways such as sign, symbol and gesture can provide a good and efficient communication as well.

Knowledge question: To what extent can memory be manipulated by people or time?

Memory is a way of knowing. We can say almost all knowledge and information are a kind of memory. For example, we know how to solve the math question because we memory that how teacher did it in the class; we know something is wrong because we have the right sample in our memory database. From an aspect, memory is a good way of gaining information. We think our memory is like a camera, it can capture the moment precisely and embeds them in our brain. But in fact, our memory is not reliable source and we can’t completely trust it at all. There is an example from the Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who study false memory. She and her group showed a video to participants ask what the sign is near the car at the intersection. When they ask participants whether there is a yield sign at the intersection near the car in that picture. Many people told definitely that they saw a “yield” sign at intersection instead of the truth “stop” sign. It follows that our memory is a reconstructive process, sometime it rebuild the false memory for us and it is easy to be influence by people. Another example is a real case, when the victim saw the photo of a suspect just after a few days later that the case happened. She said: “It might be him.” But after several months when the judge asked her again, she said: “I am absolutely sure that’s him.” How could her change her answer from “not sure” to “absolutely”? The answer is time, time change her mind. From what we’ve discussed above, memory is really easy manipulated by people and time.

Memory vs. Sense perception

 

Real life situation: Johnny touches fire and gets injured, it becomes an unforgettable memory in her mind. Since then, he knows that touch fire will hurt him and he never does it again.

When we see a color index, we can point out which one is red accurately and quickly because we are familiar with these common colors. Do we know “this color” is “red” when we were born? Obviously, the answer is no. When we were children, we asked parents “what is that” when we see some new things. Parents told you “it is red. Color red.” Then it becomes your memory, next time when you saw it you know it is color red. The same as color, when we were children, parents told you “it is too sour, don’t taste it.” But we were curious about it, so we taste it and then we know this weird flavor is called “sour”. What we have discussed above indicate that many sense perceptions are from memory.

 

In what ways does the IB encourage experiential learning?

 

Experiential knowledge is very important for people, as well as experiential knowledge, experiential learning is important in study. If we can gain new knowledge through our own experience, this knowledge will be unforgettable for ourselves. Of course, IB diploma encourage us use experiential learning in our study.

 

When I was study in Chinese school, the only way I got knowledge is from class and teacher. Teacher told us whether it is right or not, the only thing we should do is copy the words from power point. But now, in many subjects, we should investigate and discuss to choose the topic we want to learn. For example, English B teacher let us research on the Internet and make own decision which topic we will learn. What we research on the Internet becomes the experiential knowledge for us, and we will memorize them clearly because these are what we want to learn. The same as history, we read textbook alone and finish our essay independently. What we write is our own ideas and thoughts, we read whole textbook and consider it carefully.

 

In Chinese class, teacher required us to do a presentation alone. We need to figure out a topic and finish all research by ourselves. I find that IB diploma requires students do too much independent research, but because of that, I think my research skill become better and better. I will not be restless if teachers tell us to do something independently. I am even getting better from more and more practice.

 

All in all, IB diploma encourages experiential learning in different ways and different class. Experiential learning is a effective way to study as well.

Experiential Knowledge

There are two ways we can get knowledge. The first one is innate behavior, these behaviors or knowledge are inherent. The second one is Acquired behavior, these behaviors or knowledge are gained from our experiences in the past years. In a sense, acquired behavior is equal to experiential knowledge. For example, we all know that we can’t touch hot water. We know hot water will hurt our fingers because we touch hot water before and we did got injured. This knowledge is an experiential knowledge.

 

I believe that we learned from experiential knowledge although sometimes we seem to repeat something we already know. For instance, if math teacher tells you how to solve this type of question, you get it and copy it down on your notebook. When you want to do the same type of questions, you will find you can’t do it without your notebook. But with you practice more and more the same type of questions, you will find it is very easy for you and you can do it more quickly without your notebook. This change is what you learned from your experience that doing the same type of questions repeatedly.

 

Experiential knowledge is certainly important for people. All managers would like to hire a person who has abundant working experience rather than a new person. The reason is that the person who has much working experience won’t make many mistakes because he already made in the last company. These people can facilities companies grow more quickly and earn more benefits. Another example is that when you have a problem, you will never ask a person who is elder than you. With people live longer and longer, they are gaining more and more experiential knowledge. In most cases, the problems you are facing and asking for helping are what they experienced before. Sometimes, they even know what is the result of this thing. For example, I asked my mom that if my friend and me are completely different, we have different interests, different personalities and sometimes we even have completely opposite ideas on the same thing, should we keep this friendship? My mom told me that your best friends will not be a person who is extremely similar as you. I doubted it before, but several years later, I had a friend who is really similar as me. But we can’t stay together for a while, because we are too similar to stay together. In the same way, you will never ask your elder sister and brother for help, because their experience is less than you, their suggestions will be really childish because they maybe even don’t know what you are talking about.

 

Experiential knowledge is very important for people. But nobody has the completely same perspectives with other people because everyone has experience and experiential knowledge.

 

Everyone has his or her own perspectives and views the world in different ways. Your family, your friends, your age and your teachers may affect and shape your personal perspectives. This week in TOK classes, we discussed about the different cultures affect our perspectives, such as your table manners and the way of greeting.

 

In my opinion, culture is not the only thing can affect us. Your age and your sex can affect yourself too much. Several weeks ago, my elder sister told me angrily and sadly that her best friend and the girl she hates most went shopping together and post the their selfies without telling her. She swear to me that she wouldn’t talk to her anymore. I told her that it was not a big deal, she shouldn’t be so angry. But she insisted that it was necessary to be angry about it. Now, I am a 16-year-old girl. I thought it is doesn’t matter and it is really childish, but I forgot that I suffered the same thing when I was her age, and I was angry about it as well. I just realized that my age changed my perspectives a lot.

 

As well as age, your gender affects you a lot in your daily life. For example, when we are asked to take notes of something on a blank paper. Many girls will take out the ruler and draw a line to make sure her handwriting will be perfect, but I had never seen a boy do it. In addition, when girls are taking notes, many girls like to use different color pen to write something to make her notebook nicer. When it turns to boys, there are no colorful notebooks and they don’t care whether it nice or not.

 

What is far more important is that your family members who have been affecting you all the time. When I was child, my parents told me that it was not appropriate to keeping expressing your ideas in a conversation or a community. You’d better express your ideas and listen to others, and then you can express another one. So that when I grow up, I find it is really annoying me when a person who keep talking and doesn’t realize that she should gives chance to other people to talk in a conversation. I will think this person is really rude and arrogant.

 

All in all, my perspectives are affected by many factors such as my age, my gender and my family.

 

 

 

 

 

How does perspective affect how you see the world and your place in it?

In my memory, I have never seen a movie get full marks grades after showing. I have never seen a person that everyone likes. There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Everyone views the world in different perspectives. The easiest way to prove that is to draw a world map. We did it at the start of our T.O.K class. I found that many Chinese students put Asia in the middle of their maps. The boundary line of China is really clear and accurate. But Victor’s map was different with us, he placed Europe in the middle and he drew the clear outline of South America countries. Taiwaness highlight Taiwan and drew it outline carefully. We all had different perspectives toward the world. The places we were born and grow up engrave strong influence on how we view it in the world. I always pay attention on the events happened in China and Chengdu. In my mind, China is the center of the world.

 

What can affect your perspectives? Religion, your family, history, geography and etc. The things your parents told you that you can do or not were your first perspectives. When you were child, your center of the world map is you, your parents and your home. To be honest, that was undoubtedly logical. Because that’s all what you know of the whole world. But as the time goes by, we can look through Internet, we read more books, we watch more movies, we have higher educations and we have more and more social media you can get information from. Your world is expanded, it becomes bigger and bigger. You have something you are interest in, you get more and more friends, you know more things about the world, then, you place yourself at a new position.

 

There was an interesting question I’ve never thought. “Is wrong that you place yourself in the middle of your own world? ”. I think put myself in the middle of my own world is not wrong. But it is not mean you should be selfish and don’t care other people. My standpoint is you should put yourself in your own map because you are responsible to lead your life. Many people think I do lead my own life, everyone leads their own life. In fact, many people are not. It is very easy to influence them and change their mind. They can’t stand on their sides even it is true if most people choose others; they don’t have their own perspectives, they like to imitate other people. That’s true, nobody can put himself in the really center of his map, but you should have the consciousness that you are the middle of your world. You should insist your viewpoint if it is right, you should have your perspectives, you should know you are the middle of you own map. Try to do something you like, insist something you think it is right.