Buddhism

1. Briefly describe the historical context of the emergence of the religion (where, when, who, why?)


Buddhism is a religion to about 300 million people around the world. The word comes from 'budhi', 'to awaken'. It has its origins about 2,500 years ago when Siddhartha Gotama, known as the Buddha, was himself awakened (enlightened) at the age of 35.

Siddhartha Gotama was born into a royal family in Lumbini, now located in Nepal, in 563 BC. At 29, he realised that wealth and luxury did not guarantee happiness, so he explored the different teachings religions and philosophies of the day, to find the key to human happiness. After six years of study and meditation he finally found 'the middle path' and was enlightened. After enlightenment, the Buddha spent the rest of his life teaching the principles of Buddhism — called the Dhamma, or Truth — until his death at the age of 80

2. What are the main distinctive beliefs of its adherents now?


To many, Buddhism goes beyond religion and is more of a philosophy or 'way of life'. It is a philosophy because philosophy 'means love of wisdom' and the Buddhist path can be summed up as:

(1) to lead a moral life,
(2) to be mindful and aware of thoughts and actions, and
(3) to develop wisdom and understanding.

Buddhism explains a purpose to life, it explains apparent injustice and inequality around the world, and it provides a code of practice or way of life that leads to true happiness.

3. For adherents of the religion, which is more authoritative; spiritual leaders alive now, sacred texts, individual perspectives?

Buddhist teachings can be understood and tested by anyone. Buddhism teaches that the solutions to our problems are within ourselves not outside. The Buddha asked all his followers not to take his word as true, but rather to test the teachings for themselves. ln this way, each person decides for themselves and takes responsibility for their own actions and understanding. This makes Buddhism less of a fixed package of beliefs which is to be accepted in its entirety, and more of a teaching which each person learns and uses in their own way.

4. What aspects of the religion do you find attractive and why?

I think this religion is very attractive because it allows oneself to explore deep within our subconscious in order to discover our own beliefs that we live by, as well as it is a very peaceful and calm religion. It allows anyone to be anyone that they want to be, and I think that is a valuable part of this religion itself.

5. What aspects of the religion do you disagree with and why?

To be quite honest, I have no come across anything within Buddhism that I disagree with. I find it a very peaceful loving religion and I think that it allows personal freedom of choice, which I truly admire.

6. How well do the TOK ways of knowing handle the approach to knowledge within the religion?

I think that Buddhism teaches the basic principles of understanding and knowing, sought within us. This in turn reflects the TOK ways of knowing.

Photo taken and minipulated by Hannah Foreman
SLIPPER ISLAND 2010

Human Sciences Research

Describe Independent Variable:

An independent variable is a factor that can be varied or manipulated in an experiment (e.g. an object). This means that it in the thing in an experiment that you change, for example using distance, this is the thing that you will want to change in order to find out the results and to support your conclusion and your own hypothesis.

Describe Dependant Variable:

A dependent variable is what you measure in the experiment and what is affected during the experiment for example time and height. This variable depends solely upon the independent variable, thus making it dependant.

The difference between control/experimental group:

The control group only thinks that they are receiving results of whatever it is they are testing while only the experimental group is really receiving it. However, if you are a member of either group you will never know which you were a part of. It would/could skew the results and render the entire test invalid. For example, the reason that these groups are different comes down to the truth that will need to be gained from the experiments, and truth from a person is hard to gain when they know the specific answers that the experimental group is searching for. Therefore, the experimental group are the ones performing the test secretly, and the control group are the oblivious ones involved in participating within the test.

2.What implication(s) does this have for knowledge gained in the human sciences (how does this issue or concept affect our ability to learn and know things via the human sciences)

The implications from dependant and independent variables are that dependant variables depend solely upon that of the independent, so if the independent variable goes wrong, the dependant cannot complete the test without the reliable results gained from the independent. That is its fault.

For the control and experimental groupings, the experimental group depends upon the control group to produce reliable and truthful results; otherwise the test will be in vain. This is hard to gain, as truth is incredibly difficult to gain from human beings without them being oblivious to the test that is being carried out upon them. Truth is hard enough to gain, but by adding human nature to the equation, you almost have a recipe for disaste

Human Response

In our previous TOK lesson, the class was split in half; one half was observing the patterns of human reaction in certain conditions, and the other half were the ones being observed (supposedly without knowing they were being watched).

At first, this exercise made me rather uncomfortable. Being one of the observed, I knew quite quickly what the other half of the class was doing. When I realised this, my whole personal reaction to the test changed and instantly I put on a persona for the class to see, for example, on task with a straight back and calm attitude because I believed this to be something that the observers would want to see. This highlights perfectly how truth is incredibly difficult to obtain in the light of human reactions and actions. Once a person knows that they are being tested for something, instantly, whether we mean it to happen or not, our truthful attitude (if we have one) becomes one that is in fact biased.

In future, the truth must be sought without the people being tested knowing, for that is the only way that the answers will not be thought out or biased.

Mathematics for Dummies

In previous TOK lessons, we have been concentrating on the idea of Mathematics and how it is applied to many theories and things that are around us in the modern world. In fact, George, Maddy, Will and I created a video along with 3 others in the class.

The link posted below shows the 5 minute movie of 'Mathematics for Dummies'. This movie explores the world through patterns, deductive prove, asthetics and Incompleteness theorems. All of these concepts are rather confusing, however, we researched these ideas together and discussed them to get maximum meaning.

However, I myself have an opinion of maths that is it just boring and cannot be applied to the beauty of the world. I struggled with this idea that maths contributed to the nature of the planet, yet after researching the ideas present in our video, I have a broader sense of the idea of Mathematics.

Maths to me is one of the most boring subjects, however, now I have a kinder outlook on this subject which has shaped the World to its beautiful state that it is today.

The Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1BRTrEX9rcw

Natural Science

In our previous TOK lesson we talked about the science of being and almost the illusions we see in science, and how it affects us daily. WHat science has done for us today etc

We looked at some interesting tests on youtube, which we not necessarily correct but in saying that, how do you know whether they were real or not. We looked at how water is 'effected' with emotions that we bare to it for example if you place words like death on it it will react badly to say if you placed the word love on it.
To me, this seems likes a plausable idea. I mean, the world is surrounded by water. Who is to say it is not affected by emotion. In English we use the term 'pathetic fallacy' which means the weather is reacting to the theme of the play. So why not apply that theory to real life.

Others may not agree with me, but I found it very interesting to see what some scientists do and how forever they are discovering new things about the world.

Because it is a wonderful world that we live in. Why not explore it? why not perform tests with rice? why not fail with our theories and hypothesis'. It just means that we get to write another one and discover something new that is real.

Obsolete Science

This week we made a small presentation in pairs of Obsolete types of sciences. WIth Maddy, we researched 'N-Rays' and "Cold Fusion". It was interesting to see how different types of sciences had become so 'famous' in the "Old Days", yet had somehow disappeared or been reformed into Today. Finding information was also very difficult as many websites were biased and not very helpful. But the presentation is finished, and emailed to our teacher Mr Smith.

I think the reason why we did this presentation was to give us a broader look of science and how some theories that we have today came about as such, for example N-Rays was just a different version of the X- Rays that we use commonly today.

We have a test today, which unfortunately I can't attend as I am home sick, but next time at TOK i will take the test. Hopefully it shall not be too hard, as I'm not very good at answering questions, because I feel like I just don't know the answers of many things. "Why are we here?" is something that I feel I will never be able to answer.