All five are compulsory. They differ not only in what they study but in what they accept as evidence, how much certainty they can offer, and what they are structurally unable to detect.
Knowledge of the human past built from traces that survive by accident as much as by design. History is unusual in that its object cannot be observed or repeated, so its claims rest on the interpretation of evidence produced by people with their own purposes.
Four elements · knowledge questions for each
Systematic study of human behaviour and social life, where the objects of study are aware of being studied and can change in response. This makes measurement, replication and the isolation of variables harder here than in the natural sciences, without making them impossible.
Four elements · knowledge questions for each
Knowledge of the physical world produced through observation, modelling and controlled intervention. Its authority rests less on the certainty of any single result than on the community practices that expose results to being overturned.
Four elements · knowledge questions for each
Knowledge of abstract structure established by proof from stated assumptions. Mathematics offers the nearest thing to certainty available to a knower, and raises the sharpest questions about what its objects are and why so much of it turns out to describe the world.
Four elements · knowledge questions for each
Knowledge produced and conveyed through made works. The arts raise the question of whether something can be known through a work that could not be stated as a proposition, and of how judgement here can be more than preference.
Four elements · knowledge questions for each
The essay asks you to work across two areas of knowledge. Which two you pick decides more about the essay than almost anything else you do afterwards.