EXPLORING THE GEOGRAPHY OF KNOWLEDGE

The Limits of a Metaphor

Gautam SenThe Koç School

Istanbul

IB DAY MARCH 26 2011MARMARA COLLEGE

Aims of this presentation

Why do we teach our subjects? What are disciplines good for? What constitutes a discipline? How do they relate to each other? What is interdisciplinarity, and what

is it good for?

MAP AND TERRITORY

Real world issues and disciplines (Invasion of Iraq, Global Warming, creating a learning society)

How are disciplinary boundaries created?

Are disciplines akin to countries or cultures?

What happens when disciplines combine?

IN DISCIPLINARY GROUPS, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING

QUESTIONS What is your discipline

essentially about? What knowledge, problems, questions and issues does your discipline consider?

What are the main purposes and aims of your discipline?

What are the main methods applied in your discipline?

How do the experts and of practitioners in your discipline organize themselves in their inquiry and practice?

What forms do their productions of knowledge take?

How do practitioners in your discipline approach or establish truth, or achieve certainty? How do they convince other practitioners of their claims?

What counts as error? What counts as evidence? What is the role of

interpretation and perception in your discipline?

How can one detect subjectivity and bias in your discipline, and what value is placed on objectivity?

How is creativity in your discipline understood? Does it permit any role for the imagination?

IN MIXED DISCIPLINARY GROUPS, PERFORM THE FOLLOWING TASKS

Using the responses to the questions in the previous slide, discuss similarities and differences between the disciplines in your groups.

Find at least TWO things (e.g., terms, concepts, theories, insights, metaphors, models) from your colleague’s discipline that is of interest or value to you personally, or in your discipline.

Give a colleague or student from another discipline TWO reasons why he or she should study your own.

Find a question or problem that can be investigated more fruitfully by integrating your own discipline and one of your colleagues’. What problems might such an investigation encounter?

DISCUSSION

Are disciplines akin to countries or cultures? What correspond to disciplinary borders, and

what happens when they are crossed? If you had to design your own system of

education, how would you organize learning? By disciplines, by skills, or on some other basis?

What might be some objections to your proposal, and obstacles to carrying them out?

How can disciplines be integrated in the study of the world?

WRAP UP

Why are our subjects worth teaching?

What metaphor (apart from “map-territory”) would you employ to describe the relationship between the world and our understandings of it?

How, if at all, have you changed your mind as a result of this discussion?