2. Darwin vs. Mao

Or Science vs. History
There may have been many times when you nodded along, believed everything your science teacher said. But in your history class, you may have often raised questions to the credibility of the facts and started to doubt the accuracy of historical documentations. Why does this happen?

This issue can be traced back to the origin of the method of acquiring knowledge in these two distinct areas.

We realize that science is a subject build on precision and before ANY theory or fact is established, repeat testing and questioning have to be carried out, in order to make any claim more reliable. We tend to believe that more times it had been tested, the more reliable it will be (the fact has withstood many testing and not failed, which proofs that it works on almost any occasion). This method of acquiring knowledge and testing claims are deemed to be more accurate and reliable by our standard. Hence, we often think that whatever fact that we are presented with, it is relatively true.

The fact that science facts or theories are only relatively true is because many things in science can be not ascertained for sure yet, with our current technologies. We accept whichever theory that can fit the best into everyday phenomenom, that can explain why things happen the way they do around us; whichever thing that can allow us to predict future trends. Theories in science are justifiable. They make sense to our brains. Like Benjamin Kuipers said on his site:

“The reason why we don’t believe in fairies but in electrons is because Fairies are much more free. A fairy does what it decides to do. We haven’t been able to find any useful rules for predicting how a fairy will behave under particular circumstances, or even for telling when a fairy has been involved in a particular observation.”

Therefore, humans tend to latch on to the explanations, which are justifiable with reasoning, and that fit that best and allow us to predict future trend, as we learnt in TOK. So until a new theory comes along or we come up with a theory of our own, we will always latch onto the best fitting one.

In history however, the facts are less reliable then that in science due to that facts acquired all came from human made objects.

Those of you doing history should that history relies HEAVILY on first hand eye witness acounts; whatever a witness says, it is placed in priority. But how many of you considered that how biased a witness account can be? Amnesia, personal emotions, exaggeration, and other things can ALL contribute to the accuracy of personal accounts. These factors greatly affect the credibility of evidence gained through witnesses. So what is the solution? Historians do not only acquire information from one source, they acquire information from others to reach a consensus on the information they have gained.

Yet, we still do not fully trust people accounts because we understand that witness accounts cannot be completely accurate, despite how many people had been interviewed.

Therefore, we wish to rely on somethings that are not as capricious and changeable as people; we look at documentations, such as letters, and diaries. But think about this, just like a piece of music, a letter can have different levels of context. As we have learnt in TOK, different upbringings can allow us to intepret differently and understand different meanings in one context. So a letter talking about the death of a bear can be understood to be talking about the death of a bear, or the fall of Soviet Union (bear was the symbol for soviet union) by other people who has the prior knowledge and background information on Soviet Union.

Despite the factual information that documentations present, it is humans that eventually intepret the piece freely. When there is need for intepretation, there will be a difference of people’s intepretation and what we get out of the documentation. It is humans who make the documentations and give us information; there is a constant danger of changing the credibility of information based on personal emotions and backgrounds.

You see, even a factual information can be understood differently in history and things can be moulded by peoples’ emotions in history, whereas in science, the strict dimensions made up by matters, not humans, do not allow people to freely intepret what the scientist had meant; the only freedom in science is to use our imaginations to challenge existing theories.