Theory of Knowledge · IB Diploma

The map of
how we know.

Real-world cases drawn deliberately from India, Asia, Africa and Latin America, each tagged to the concepts, areas of knowledge and prompts it raises. Free to browse. Built by a TOK teacher.

Browse the library See how it works

No sign-up to read · 123 published · 12 concepts · 5 areas · 35 prompts

A Knower Record · illustrative shape

The library

Cases worth arguing about

Every cover is generated from the case’s own tags, so no two look alike and none needed a stock photo.

Southeast Asia
Perpetrators, re-enacting
The Act of Killing invited men who carried out Indonesia's 1960s massacres to restage their killings in the film genres they loved, and the perpetrators' own…
TruthInterpretation
Africa
When a government doubted the virus
South Africa's government under Mbeki gave platform to AIDS-dissident scientists and delayed antiretroviral rollout, and later epidemiological studies…
EvidencePowerResponsibility
East Asia
Recognised as indigenous, at last
Japan legally recognised the Ainu as indigenous only in 2019, after generations of assimilation policy that had suppressed language and practice while…
PowerCulture
India
Restoring murals nobody saw painted
Every intervention on the Ajanta cave paintings, from colonial-era varnishes that darkened them to modern cleaning that removes those very varnishes, embodies…
InterpretationObjectivity
The Middle East and North Africa
The book that named algebra
Al-Khwarizmi's ninth-century treatise systematised equation-solving for inheritance shares and trade, and its title gave algebra its name while his own gave us…
CultureExplanation
East Asia
Move 37
In its 2016 match against Lee Sedol, AlphaGo played a move professional commentators initially called a mistake and later called beautiful, a line no human…
InterpretationExplanation

The structure

Twelve concepts, four questions

The IB gives you twelve concepts as a flat list. We group them by what they do, so the colour you see on a card is the same colour on a filter, on a prompt and on your own record.