Theory of Knowledge Essay: How History Impacts Knowledge Quality (IB)

This Theory of Knowledge (TOK) essay explores the claim that the quality of knowledge produced by an academic discipline is directly proportional to its duration of historical development. The essay begins by defining key terms like 'quality of knowledge' and argues that knowledge gains quality through usefulness and purpose. It then examines the relationship between historical development and knowledge accumulation, providing examples from history and ethics as academic disciplines. The essay discusses the evolution of these disciplines over time, highlighting how historical context and advancements have broadened the scope and depth of knowledge within them. Counterclaims are also presented, challenging the direct proportionality and emphasizing the difficulty in quantifying knowledge quality. The essay concludes by reaffirming the applicability of the initial claim to various academic disciplines, emphasizing the importance of historical development in enriching the quality of knowledge.

Running head: THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Theory of Knowledge (TOK) is one of the compulsory subjects in the International
Baccalaureate (IB), which is an international educational foundation and that was established
in 1968. IB proposes six essays and students have to choose one essay title and explain it in
the interdisciplinary manner (Woozley, 2016). However, each essay title should explain in a
generic cross-disciplinary ways about knowledge and the essay should be answered
considering the issues elevated in the essay title and students’ need to reach in conclusion
about it. The essay should explain putting forward the claims and the counterclaims. It should
link the knowledge issues to the ways of knowing and areas of knowledge.
The title of the essay claims, “the quality of knowledge produced by an academic
discipline is directly proportional to the duration of historical development of that discipline.”
Here the first assumption is that knowledge embraces a quality. Here the meaning is that the
knowledge has qualitative value and the essay will try to answer the qualitative value of the
knowledge. In order to gain quality to the knowledge, knowledge should be useful and
purposeful in ways or the other (Lehrer, 2015). To prove the first assumption, some examples
has been provided, which can also justify the first claim. The example could be taken by
application of the common sense. In medical science, with the progression of the discipline or
simply in the discipline, the quality of knowledge exists and it is valued. Qualities even could
be defined as values that should be given to the things, which are considered as useful.
Medical science or the knowledge of the medical science is useful to us and it has great value
in our life. However, the knowledge of the medical science has quality.
From another subject area, the first assumption could be defined by the means of
Indigenous knowledge system. The indigenous knowledge system has quality as the
knowledge system has some usefulness. One could gain knowledge while studying the
indigenous knowledge system as it gives opportunity to know about the indigenous culture

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and this is the area from where one could identify the quality of the indigenous knowledge
system.
The implied assumption of the essay title is that the knowledge develops or
progresses. Knowledge progresses with time. With advancement of time, the knowledge
produced from any academic discipline accumulates information. Lots of research works
were done in the particular academic discipline otherwise it was impossible to progress
(Alchin and Henly, 2014). For example, in the advancement of Interdisciplinary studies of
various fields of history, sociology, political science and anthropology, cultural studies,
which has been stared from 1964 in centre for contemporary cultural studies or The
Birmingham School has added new perspective towards the knowledge system of different
disciplines and has helped them to progress in this way (Buehl, 2017). However, the above
example could touch the idea of the advancement of the academic discipline with the
historical development of that discipline.
The second assumption could be taken from the last partition of the essay title, which
is the duration of the historical development. From this assumption, it is clear that historical
development needs time. Naturally, any kind of development takes long time. However, the
total time taken by the development of the history of any discipline is directly proportional to
the quality of the knowledge from that discipline. With the development of time while
creating history of any discipline, knowledge is added to that discipline for the advancement.
The knowledge should be valuable in nature otherwise; it would be not possible for
advancing or progression of that discipline.
For example, two disciplines have been taken to prove the essay title. However,
before this, the concept of academic discipline needs to know. Academic discipline is the
branch of knowledge, which is researched and taught as the branch of higher education

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system. Here, the areas of knowledge would be taken into account as academic disciplines are
history and ethics and the ways of knowing would be reason and language.
History as an academic discipline uses some narrative structure that could examine
the past. History as an academic discipline also analyzes the sequences of the past events.
However, while doing so the discipline could determine objectively the sequences of causes
of an event and provide different perspectives of the same event. Studying of the discipline is
very old in time. Evidences could be found that in the ancient Greek culture, people would
study and write events of their past. Herodotus, who was the Greek historians from 5th
century B.C, is considered as the ‘father of the history’ within the western tradition. The
ancient influences have helped to develop the discipline into its various forms and manners
(Tonkin, McDonald and Chapman, 2016).
With time the discipline has developed. Many studies and researches have taken place
within the discipline. The discipline what we study in contemporary time, is wide ranging in
nature. However, it has taken lots of time to evolve and it has evolved over the century. Many
historical evidences have been discovered with time and time has itself created history. The
modern study of history could include the study of specific region, certain thematic or topical
investigation of history. Now in this time, history is one of the major disciplines within the
university curriculum. On the contrary, the quality of knowledge produced by an academic
discipline is directly proportional to the duration of historical development of that discipline,
can be refuted easily because there are infinite ways which do not prove the direct
proportionality and the counterclaim can be supported with the argument that it is very
difficult to quantify quality of knowledge. For instance, some academic disciplines like
philosophy has existed since several years, but the quality of knowledge produced by
philosophy did not create tangible benefits. This example clearly provides evidence to the
fact that quality of knowledge is not always directly proportional to the historical

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development of an academic discipline. To support this counterclaim, examples of new
discipline like psychology can be considered which has several tangible benefits for society
and enhances our lives. There are also many assumptions involved in the statement, for
instance, it has been assumed that knowledge has a quality, but it is unclear what is the
meaning of quality related to knowledge. If quality is measured in terms of usefulness of the
academic discipline, then it can be counterclaimed that there are many academic disciplines
which are relatively new yet have more tangible benefits than academic disciplines that have
existed since several years (Lehrer 2015).
Therefore, the essay title is applicable for the development of the academic discipline
of History. As an academic discipline, the subject History, which produced the quality of
knowledge is directly proportional or has contributed to the historical development of that
discipline. With time, the discipline has evolved and with the evolution the quality of the
knowledge has been broaden. The purpose, understanding, themes, methods in history have
evolved with time. In the past, the discipline was narrow. The historical approaches were
limited. However, with time, the perspective has evolved and it has added value to the
knowledge system of history.
Similarly, with the development of ethics as an academic discipline, it could be said
that in the past, the discipline was limited to particular region like Jewish ethics or Greek
ethics. However, the division is still present, but the areas of the ethics are broadening up.
The ethical division in the discipline is divided into Western and Eastern ethics. The ethics as
a discipline of study was originated in the ancient world like, Mesopotamian Epic of
Gilgamesh, Icelandic Eddas and Homer’s Illiad. These ancient poems portrayed a set of
values that suited with the valor of the strong leaders of small ancient tribes. It was the most

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ancient evidences of the ethical practices of human being. However, with advancement of
time, the ethics as an academic discipline has evolved. It has incorporated the natural law of
ethics, Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism. In the twentieth century, there were many debates
regarding the nature of the ethics (Dewey, 2016). The ethical views ranged from moral
realism, which states that the moral truths are all about mind-independent realities. The
modern views of evolutionary ethics state that ethical practices depend on the ways of the
human being that lead them in the evolutionary process. The Universal Declaration of the
Right Wings asserts the universal and moral rights of humans to the education, life and other
basic needs. The ethics after the world war two has changed into the basic existential
reflections of the purpose and meaning of life. It leads the ethical approaches based on the
situation and private interaction. After the 1970s, the discipline has enlarged its wings to
business, biology and environmental sciences. However, now the discipline has evolved in
business ethics, bioethics and environmental ethics (Dewey, 2016).
However, the essay title is applicable for the discipline of the ethics. The quality of
knowledge produced by the academic discipline of ethics is directly proportional to the
duration of historical development of that particular discipline. The historical development of
ethics was started in ancient time. From that time, this discipline has evolved. The evolution
has provided benefit to the knowledge system of ethics. The time in which the academic
discipline has evolved, has enriched the quality of knowledge in that discipline. However, it
is directly proportional to the duration of historical development of that discipline.
The evolution of these academic disciplines like, history and ethics incorporate the
philosophy. It should be kept in mind that the historical development of the discipline of
history and ethics add value to those disciplines. With the historical development, these
disciplines should add value or enrich their quality and that should be directly proportional to
the quality of knowledge.

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The counterclaim could be proved by the example that carries the sense of lost in
time. Then the claim quality of knowledge is directly proportional to the duration of historical
development would be challenged. Greek fire and Damascus steel are the two technological
innovations whose secrets are lost in time. Thus, from the perspective of discipline of
technology, the following example is not fitted in the title claims.
It can be concluded by stating that the essay title the quality of knowledge produced
by an academic discipline is directly proportional to the duration of historical development of
that discipline and this statement is applicable to any academic discipline. The essay has
proved it with example of academic disciplines like history and ethics.

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References
Alchin, N. and Henly, C., 2014. Theory of Knowledge Third Edition. Hodder Education.
Buehl, D., 2017. Developing readers in the academic disciplines. Stenhouse Publishers.
Dewey, J., 2016. Ethics. Read Books Ltd.
Lehrer, K., 2015. Theory of knowledge. Routledge.
Tonkin, E., McDonald, M. and Chapman, M.K. eds., 2016. History and ethnicity (Vol. 27).
Routledge.
Woozley, A.D., 2016. Theory of Knowledge: an introduction.