TOK EXHIBITION Object 1: The Voyager Golden Records
- Theme: Knowledge and Technology
- Rationale: The Voyager Golden Records, included aboard the Voyager spacecrafts, contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, intended for any extraterrestrial life or future humans who might find them. This object exemplifies the human endeavor to communicate across the vast unknowns of space and time, confronting the inherent limitations in our ability to ensure that such messages can ever be deciphered or understood by non-human intelligence. It raises profound questions about the limits of communication and the possibility that certain aspects of human knowledge, culture, and experience may remain forever unknowable to other forms of consciousness, should they
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TOK EXHIBITION Object 2: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
- Theme: Knowledge and Technology
- Rationale: The JWST, designed to observe the most distant galaxies, represents humanity’s attempt to push the boundaries of cosmic knowledge. Despite its unprecedented capabilities, the JWST also symbolizes the inherent limitations of our quest to fully understand the universe. It underscores the idea that the vastness of the cosmos, the origins of existence, and the nature of dark matter may contain elements that are fundamentally unknowable, given the constraints of current technology and the limitations imposed by the speed of light and the size of the observable universe.
TOK EXHIBITION Object 3: A Locked Diary with a Lost Key
- Theme: Knowledge and the Knower
- Rationale: A locked diary, for which the key has been lost, serves as a metaphor for the personal or subjective knowledge that remains inaccessible to others. It represents the idea that some experiences, thoughts, and emotions are inherently private or internal, making them unknowable to anyone but the individual who possesses them. This object invites discussion on the nature of subjective experience and the limits of empathy and understanding, highlighting the privacy of consciousness as a domain of unknowable knowledge.
TOK EXHIBITION Object 4: A Fragment of an Ancient Language’s Undeciphered Script
- Theme: Knowledge and Language
- Rationale: Fragments of undeciphered scripts from ancient civilizations, such as the Indus script, embody the challenge of unlocking knowledge that has lost its contextual and linguistic framework. These artifacts represent the idea that without a Rosetta Stone-like key, the knowledge contained within these languages may remain permanently beyond our grasp, illustrating the critical role of language in transmitting knowledge across time and the potential for historical knowledge to become unknowable when linguistic links are severed.
TOK EXHIBITION Object 5: Quantum Entanglement Experiment Setup
- Theme: Knowledge and Technology
- Rationale: Quantum entanglement experiments, which demonstrate the instantaneous connection between particles regardless of distance, confront the limits of classical physics and our understanding of the universe. These experiments highlight aspects of quantum mechanics that challenge our intuitive grasp of reality, suggesting that the fundamental nature of the universe at the quantum level may include phenomena that are essentially unknowable or irreconcilable with classical notions of space and time, underscoring the limits of human cognition in comprehending the true nature of reality.
- exist. The Golden Records encapsulate the optimism and challenges of attempting to bridge the ultimate divides in knowledge and understanding.
