Our fourth ToK day began with a couple of book presentations which were followed by a repetition of the use of language in the collection and preservation, as well as the passing on of knowledge by Ms Nickel. This included the amusing example of how to order a pretzel or “brezn” in Bavarian German and in Swiss German which led to us discovering a difference in culture via a comparison of politeness. The next question discussed was “Does some knowledge only belong to certain communities of knowers?” which was illustrated by a specific group of carpetmakers who use a symbol language to express things like “manliness” in a carpet. To an outsider, the symbols look like mere patterns, but someone in the community would be able to understand the symbols and interpret them, hence we can say that this knowledge belongs to that community.
The next segment was about the ToK exhibition. Ms Nickel introduced it by giving us an example from with objects of her own. Afterwards she introduced us to both the grading scheme of the exhibition and the idea behind it. The next step before we took a longer break was to brainstorm to a prompt we chose from last year's selection, which saw us search for both answers to the question of our prompts as well as objects to represent them. After returning from the break, we read a ToK exhibition from last year while highlighting the points an examiner would look for and afterwards giving our own grade for the text according to them. This marked the end of our morning.
To start off the afternoon, Ms Debrunner showed us a documentary on the Herculaneum scrolls and how technology helped us read them. The Herculaneum scrolls date back to 79 AD, where the eruption of Mount Vesuvius charred them so badly, that an attempt at opening them would cause the scrolls to crumble apart. However, through the development of innovative technology, scientists were able to create a scan of the scrolls, map them and then enhance the clarity of the text using AI.
To finish off the day, we were tasked with writing a ToK exhibition to a prompt of our choosing with 2 objects: one object of our choice and the Herculaneum scrolls. This allowed us to practise writing our own exhibition texts.
