As an IB student, how has your learning of history and science contributed to your understanding of individuals and societies?

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As an IB student, how has your learning of history and science contributed to your understanding of individuals and societies?

Science and literature are highly complementary in nature. Both are the eternal instructors for mankind. They are experimental in nature, and depend on research and observation. They are highly similar in that the scientists and the authors both have to rely on their knowledge, resources, creativity and experimentation. They have to fly on their wings of imagination to bring forth their theory or views. Science and literature are different in the aspect that literature gives us an insight, which we have to apply to our lives while in science we have to apply our lives to the scientific theories and laws. If science teaches us how, literature teaches us why. Through this essay I will make an attempt to show how science and literature enlighten our understanding of individuals and society.

Literature is a term that is highly conducive to understanding humanity by using the author’s creative and imaginative skills. It is not just a socio-cultural-traditional artifact; it is also a way of knowing the traits, characteristics and instincts of human thinking, and also of the respective society as a whole. The literary theory is highly significant as it reflects the message of the author that can de decoded to relate it to historical, sociological, mythological and sociological aspects of man and society. Literature is beautiful even if it is ugly; it is immortal and transcendental; it is a joy and truth; it is the well-spring to our lives; it is a universal teacher that has taught mankind from time immemorial, and stands intact to give a clear or abstract message to humanity, whether in poetry or in prose. Keats rightly wrote in his poem,

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness;                        (A thing of beauty is a joy)

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"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (Ode to Grecian urn)

Literature in particular can be a remarkably effective way of imaginatively projecting ourselves into situations that lie beyond the frontiers of our own lives, and in this way it enables us vicariously to broaden the scope of our experience. For example, for the Greeks, Homer’, Iliad, is an essential piece of literature. Iliad tells us about the individual nature of man, as well as society in the Geek civilization. And it is not surprising that ...

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