TOK - Sight

In the last two lessons of TOK, we have been looking at the world, throught sight. We watched a DVD, of a rather old National Geographic documentry, called the "Invisible World." Procduced - what i can only guess from the vast array of short shorts and large collars -the seventies, some of the stuff we watched seemed a little outdated, and obselete because of it's age, however it still made interesting reading.

We looked at the world, through means of sight, that our own eyes can't see. Such, rather minute things, or things that happen too fast or slow.

What we percieve is only a very small proprotion of the world. A person with 20:20 vision can only see things, down to about a grain of sand in size. Any smaller, and we use the aid of microscopes, which technically we ourselves are not actually percieving.

The aid of microscopes enables us to examine things hundreds of times smaller than a grain of sand, such is bacteria or tiny dustmites roming our carpets and curtains.

Things that happen incredibly slowy, are also difficult to percieve from the naked eye. The moudling of an apple, is rather difficult to see, however, filmed and played at higher speed, we can see what happens to the orange much clearer. The aging of a boy to man, can also be examined, taking a picture every year, for 20 years, will give us a good idea of how someone ages. A process which might take 20 years, can be sped up in real time, to examine how someone has grown. This is where we all found the video to bve a slightly flawed, the suggested subject of this speeding up of growth, at the age of 12 had a mole on his face, rather near his ear. at 13, the mole appeared to move, and again at 14,15, 16. at each stage of growth, we watched the mole move, down his face to his neck. Bizarre, the moving mole..

Slowing down the things, the aid of cameras with increadible shutter speads, enables us to see things such as a bullet, crashing though an apple, and shredding it into many tiny pieces. This was quite spectacular to watch. Slowing down real time images, also gives us a chance to see that the horse, in full flight, has all 4 of its legs off the ground. In real time however, it is almost imposible to see this.

In summary of this video, there is so much of the world, we cannot see and percieve. George Berkley would argue, because we cannot see it, it is not there.

We then, threw off our ties, strapped them infront of our eyes, and went for a wander round the school with some our partner guides. This, despite being an incredibly fun excersize, gave us a different perspective of the school. Not knowing, where the hell we were...

I, led Adam around the school into the common room, into the toilet and up the stairs. He also managed to shove into and manhandle many a small child.

Where does this relate to TOK? Well, some would argue that we gain knowledge through experience. Specifically John Locke (not the LOST charcter), who is an empericist. Because we were blindfolded, we could not know where we were, or who was taking us round?

TOK continues to be a QI subject, with some certainly interesting lesson plans. (photocopying hands...)