TOK Essay 1st Paragraph

Topic 2: “Knowledge within a discipline develops according to the principles of natural selection.” How useful is this metaphor?

To what extent can we use Darwin’s principles of natural selection to predict the expansion of knowledge? Darwin’s principles essentially state that organisms produce unnecessary amounts of offspring to compete for limited resources, and that these offspring are born with variable and inheritable traits. Finally, the offspring with traits most well-suited to their current environment survive and pass them on; in other words, the famous adage “survival of the fittest”. I agree with this metaphor, and believe that knowledge within a discipline does develop according to these principles. To explore this claim, I will be examining the natural sciences, history, and mathematics areas of knowledge. Discovered knowledge, or the ideas that it emerges from, can be easily compared to reproducing organisms, due to the procedural nature of discovery. An idea is always inspired by a previous one, though it might “mutate” slightly and expand upon the original. And looking at the ways we establish knowing, such as imagination, memory, and reason, we can see that many ideas only “survive”, or raise interest from other experts in a field if they contain traits that are suited to the current landscape of knowledge. The raised interest, which leads to research, experimentation, and further discovery, is what creates even more ideological offspring, neatly wrapping up our analogy and demonstrating the Darwinian nature of the discovery of knowledge.

Word Count: 224 words