tok reflection

In our last tok class we discussed the importance of both logic and experience. The acquisition of knowledge is not only difficult but almost impossible without both these elements. Logical reasoning and experience are both necessarily required in life. Only one of the two without the other has no meaning. This was the main focus of our tok class on Friday.

I was perplexed when Miss Nehal asked us to decide whether we were empiricists or rationalists. An empiricist is one who believes in acquiring knowledge through experience and observation and a rationalist is one who believes in logical reasoning. I just couldn’t make up my mind as to which of the two I felt I was. when I heard the reasons given by some of my friends as to why they think they are either an empiricist or rationalist, they didn’t make any sense to me. It is actually difficult to decide which of the two u are as according to me everyone is in bits both an empiricist and rationalist. Even to gain knowledge that a plane is flying we use both logic and prior experience to come to the conclusion that the plane is flying. Thus though logic and experience are two completely different things they are incomplete without each other.

We also learnt the difference between logic and reason, something that I have never thought about before. Logic is similar to common sense eg. All my cars are white. I have a Palio. It then is logical that my Palio is white. In math we use a lot of logic and reasoning while in a subject like chemistry where we perform experiments; there is a lot of experience that is involved. Since math uses mainly logic it is called priori knowledge. It is things like these that this particular tok class provoked me to think about.