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| History Department English Department Math Department Modern Language Academic Resources Science Department Arts Student Government |
- This course is an introduction to the academic study of religion and of world religions with an emphasis on the religious traditions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. Minor religions and some New Religious Movements will be briefly explored. The course examines the historic evolution, the fundamental doctrines and beliefs, the practices, institutions and cultural expressions of these religious traditions.
Theory of Knowledge (TOK) is a course more concerned with questions than with answers. At the same time, questions are not for their own sake, but for purpose of further, fuller, truer knowledge. In TOK, the questioner (or “knower”) is at the center of the course. Knowledge can’t be known apart from a perceiving knower. Knowledge, in an objective, universal state may exist, but we acknowledge that holding and making statements of truth are always made through the mind of the knower (a mind that is inevitably a mixture of personal experiences, biases, limitations and perception among other confounding things).
TOK is a discussion course or, as colleges state, a seminar. The chief ingredient to success is the participation of the student, his engagement in the material, his involvement in class discussion and his earnest, bold willingness to read his written work aloud. In short, the course is highly Socratic, employing the method of questions, clarifications, and concrete examples to anchor all truth claims. The readings are provocative by nature, aimed at unsettling the knower and trying to knock loose false foundations, relativistic paradigms and blind prejudices about the world.
The bias of the course must be stated upfront. We don’t know whether there are any other Ways of Knowing other than the stated ones: Reason, Perception, Emotion and Language which we will take up in the first week. Certainly faith, intuition or other ways of knowing may exist or be functional in individual’s lives, but for this course even they must be put to the scrutiny of Socratic dialogue (more on that method later). The subject matter, Math, History, Natural and Human Sciences, Ethics, and the Arts will be taken up to some extent throughout the course. Blurring the lines between the Ways of Knowing and the subject matter is inevitable and even helpful as both Ways and Subject matter are human categories, not necessarily “real”.
Finally, the course is designed to start with the traditionally most concrete subject matters (the sciences), move to softer science (history, a “human” science) and conclude with a study of ethics, a subject matter which puts knowledge claims to a demanding test. Each student will write a 1,600 word paper on ethics in the second half of the semester demonstrating knowledge of how the Ways of Knowing might support ethical claims.
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