Mouse, cheese, who saw what, is seeing believing, what role does knowing play? Or: long reign reason?

 

The TOK dwellers, my lovely colleague Eda and I had a solid start to a long journey ahead into trying to put to words what we often see as intuitive practices (I know that I know this, isn't that enough?). We played with a new app - Nearpod - moving into a more engaged learning experience for large cohorts learning online, paving the way for a more structured Socratic Seminar reflection. Interestingly enough, we touched based on all of the "problematic" bits when it comes to ascertaining how we claim to know what we claim to know, and certainly how we distinguish mere observation from clear certainty. While students (all 21st century spirits) were moving through their reasoning, at the back of my mind I could not stop thinking about the role of perception in hindsight - namely, knowing what we now know of how we claimed to know at a movement in time, would we state that our reasoning continues to hold true or would it become historically obsolete? Can reasoning - as a tool and not just a practice of that tool - become historically obsolete? Is reasoning a skill learnt, studied, perfected? Is it culturally determined? Is education marked by it, regardless of the location of the school (e.g., Global South vs. Scandinavia), due to an overall cultural/social preference for a certain type of reasoning? 

Which got me then to an image I hold dear - that of my most supportive floppy disk. I often think of the role that technology plays in mediating knowing experiences; and though seeing may in fact afford us some believing, this historical item (for me at least) allowed for such a big leap of faith - on my part - when typing up my masters' thesis, and trusting its utility. Hence, reasoning played a small part in my value-judgement here, though reason helped built this lovely vessel of change.