Prompt 8: To what extent is certainty attainable?

TOK Talk · To What Extent Is Certainty Attainable?

Today I met with Dr. Rachel Oser, (Science Teacher) & 孫秀東 Xiudong Sun, (Chinese Literature and TOK Teacher) to talk about Exhibition Prompt 8: To what extent is certainty attainable? This was a really interesting episode for me firstly, because we begin by contrasting the idea of certainty in Religious knowledge and Science… This is something I find very delicate to explore through the lens of TOK. Secondonly, the episode was especially interesting because it was my first English & Chinese bilingual episode! I hope to do more of these in the future. I have added a translation of some of the sections where I thought clarity would help. I hope I have translated well enough to keep the integrity of Sun’s ideas, as well as to make it understandable to an English listener.

Some key quotes and ideas from this episode include:
Benjamin Franklin: “Nothing is certain but death and taxes” which Sun said was similar to “我唯一确定的事情是什么都不确定” The only thing of which I can be certain is that I’m not certain of anything.

"There are a thousand hamlets in a thousand people's eyes" in relation to Shakespeare… which brought up a discussion of Hamlet through a Taoist lens, and how this brings up the problem of lenses and certainty. We discuss certainty in the Arts in relation to good and bad interpretations.
Later we talk about issues that pertain to certainty have to do with our perspectives, replicability, tools and the limits of our human experience, raising the question Why do we need certainty? What is the role of doubt?

a few key Chinese words I learned from our conversation:

物种起源     wùzhǒng qǐyuán   Darwin's Origin of Species
怀疑论者     huáiyí lùn zhě        skeptic
不可知论准 bù kězhīlùn zhǔn  agnostic

Once again, thank you Bernard Wun for bringing us in and out of this episode with your guitar!