Erik Neri

Period 3A
TOK essay
Knowledge is nothing more than the systematic organisation of facts. Discuss this statement in
relation to two areas of knowledge
Knowledge is often viewed as the wisdom and insight that one may acquire over time,
by personal experiences and influences in life. The statement that knowledge is nothing more
than the systematic organisation of facts is true to an extent. Facts are statements that have been
collectively agreed upon to be true by a large majority of individuals. Your brain takes all of
these facts and links them together when you are trying to critically think about a situation.
That can also be defined as knowledge, when you piece together these facts it ends up being a
systematic organisation of facts.
This can easily be applied to the natural sciences, for example, a scientific fact would be
that a plant receives its energy from the sun. Alone this piece of information is just a fact and
therefore just stands by itself without any connection to anything else. However then someone
tells you that a primary consumer eats the plant and receives 10% of the energy the was given
from the sun, then you can link both of those facts and piece them together into knowledge. By
itself the first fact was merely information that was provided for you but when you link it with
the second fact only then does it become Knowledge. Eventually you learn that those two facts
are just 2 parts of the energy pyramid and that the entire energy pyramid is an organised system
of knowledge.
Most of the basic knowledge acquired by people starting at a young age is in school. As
young children, we learn elementary facts such as our numbers and the alphabet. The older we
become, the more facts we are taught, and the more complex these facts become. The knowledge
one may learn in school is what I think of as worldly knowledge that will get people into the
colleges and jobs that they may desire. The people that are abundant in educational knowledge

Erik Neri
Period 3A
TOK essay
are the people who dominate our economy and run our country. Certainly, this is one of the more
important types of knowledge there are and definitely one that we could not do without.
Education is vital in life, but mere facts cannot aid in the solution to all problems.
Knowledge is not always correct because sometimes facts have been proven wrong and
sometimes that means your system of knowledge is wrong. This is often seen when dealing with
a murder case. For example if Person A were to shoot Person B in the head and Person A were to
flee the scene then the authorities would have to gather all the facts from the crime scene through
sources of information such as a DNA sample or a witness and therefore come up with a
conclusion (Knowledge) of who it could have been. However if one of their sources of
information such as a witness were to steer the investigation/system of knowledge off then the
whole system of knowledge could be wrong and therefore could result in the arrest of someone
completely innocent.
This brings me to my next point that whether or not a system of knowledge is wrong/false
it still does not remove the fact that it is still a system of knowledge and it is up to the individual
assessing the situation to determine whether it is false or not. This often happens when a political
head lies to its people about a certain scandal or what not. for example if a powerful
congressman were to be in an affair with another woman and the head of state did not want the
people to find out then the head of state could cover it up with a lie and therefore would create a
separate system of organized facts apart from the truth.
Our beliefs also become vital in knowing whether something is true or not. Our personal
beliefs on government, religion, and ethics often create barriers in our minds to not accept any
sort of ideas that do not fall under these beliefs. Knowledge plays a huge role in determining our
beliefs also. Systems of knowledge that we may accept as true become part of our beliefs. For

Erik Neri
Period 3A
TOK essay
example religion has been a large topic of controversy for thousands of years now. Religion
exists in the mind of its believers, without people religion would not exist. Does that make it any
less real? Religion has been known to do many different things for millions of people throughout
time. In earlier history such as the medieval age Christianity was the absolute main religion in all
of Europe, Catholicism to be specific. All people in Europe were forced to believe and study
Catholicism because that is what the higher powers wanted them to do. Religion at this time was
an easy way of explaining things that could not be explained before such as when it would rain
people would think God was crying from the heavens, when in reality there is also a scientific
explanation to that and that would be the water cycle. Both are respectively systematic
organisations of facts but it is up to the individual to decide which organisation facts they
actually believe is true.
History is another area of knowledge that can be applied to the statement, it is also the
area of knowledge that fits the statement the best. History is a subject all kids are required to
learn throughout their years in school and it all has to do with linking facts together to form an
idea of what happened at an event and then eventually answer the most important question in
history the why?. For example in American history it is taught that the first settlers that
eventually established America were pilgrims that came from Great Britain on a ship called the
Mayflower. That again is just a group of facts linked together to form a system of knowledge,
and that is what history essentially is. History is organised by a giant timeline of major events
that have already happened. Whether or not these events/happenings ever even happened is aside
from the fact that they exist as a system of knowledge.
Knowledge is knowledge whether it is true or not and it is up to us as individuals to
determine whether these systems are true or false. Our beliefs are guided by these systems of

Erik Neri
Period 3A
TOK essay
knowledge and eventually form and mold ourselves to become the people we are, because
essentially your personal beliefs end up defining who you are as a person. Therefore the
statement Knowledge is nothing more than the systematic organisation of facts is true.