TOK

As well human development sometimes can lead to some cruel effects. It can be seen or studies in the area of knowledge, called Humanities or social Sciences. You know that with development of a certain society, the system (doesn’t matter economical system, or technology) absorbs values of people. For example, I live in Almaty, in the city which is famous for their apples. It’s even translated from Kazakh as an apple town. Before Almaty, was a city full of apple gardens, right now on the place of theses beautiful apple trees we have roads and expensive cottages for rich people. As far as we are a developing country, we have our own economy, different business spheres; it brings more profit to invest in new buildings, rather than into growing trees. If thinking rationally, on one hand true may be selling houses is really profitable, however on the other our cultural descents that brought apples here and made an apple our cultural characteristic is disappearing now. Now apple it’s not an object of pride of each citizen of Almaty, now it’s a good that can give you a lot of money if you know how to sell it. In the particular situation an apple carries a cultural value, which is subjective according to the history of the city where it was grown up first. On the other hand, an apple is a good which carries an economical characteristic such as price which is more important in this system of values. So that, civilization, development absorbed the cultural values, which I consider as negative effect of reasoning.

As well, I would like to talk about Arts, as another area of knowledge. The arts make our world more beautiful, because it is actually beautiful, you just need to see it, and Arts opens this opportunity for us. The Arts of course include paintings, poems, literature, and music and so on. For example if we take an apple in Arts, what associations do you have? When you here this word? Well as for me, I immediately start thinking about Kalliste, an apple that claimed ‘For the most beautiful one’. If you know the legend, Paris supposed to give it to the most beautiful goddess, he gave it to Aphrodite. And she got the most beautiful woman in the world, Helena from Sparta. Homer created probably the biggest poem that times “Iliad”, which gave a beginning for the world literature. Ancient Greeks had reason for creating this poem; you can find everything in Iliad: relationship between people, feelings and emotions, thoughts etc. Here, apple is a symbol of contention, it actually caused a Trojan War and it is objective, again apple was not a cause of the War, it’s a human who creates all the problems (Paris). Despite on that, homer created really wise poem, which actually was fundamental for the literature. Hence, it’s a positive effect of reasoning as a way of knowing.

However, who makes the decision in order to be evaluated as a strong or weak side of reasoning as a way of knowing.

Everyone knows, that childhood is the best time of human development, may be because in this time, we are just the way how we are, sincere, small nice creatures. Kid eating an apple, doesn’t really understand that it has 8% of vitamin C in it and that it is very useful for your health. Intuitively an individual, particularly kid knows that apple is good. Another event is that person who gave an apple for example parent rationally knows that an apple is useful and it has a lot of vitamins inside and it useful for the organism of their own child. Here, reasoning is based on our previous knowledge from books, or biology lessons that apple is a good product. Another thing is that, for example in fairy tales Snowhite and Seven Dwarfs remember an episode when “…The queen masquerades as an old apple seller and attempts to poison Snowhite with an apple…” In general apples are not poisonous, but people who had knowledge before and had some experience, put these traits on the objects. As in this example, here apple became a weapon, though in life it is not, it is even used as good medicine from some illnesses.

Hence, my conclusion will be, that objectively reasoning is the way of knowing, which helps to understand one thing (apple) in different contents. Only individual who read, will detect is it strength or weaknesses, he will think subjectively, and base his arguments on his own believes. Interesting, objects have their necessary traits, but we humans determine the effect of this object, and how it will be used.

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