TOK situations about certainty
The degree to which doubt about a claim has been closed off. Certainty is a state of the knower, not of the claim, which is why a claim can be true without anyone being certain of it and why confidence and reliability can come apart badly.
What certainty means in TOK, and the IA prompts it is central to
- India
Evacuating a million people on a forecast
Before Cyclone Fani struck Odisha in 2019, forecasts triggered the evacuation of over a million people, and the death toll stayed in double digits where a…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Certainty
- Responsibility
- South Asia
The third umpire and the ball that never arrived
A batter is given not out. The fielding side reviews. On the big screen, a tracking system reconstructs the ball's flight, and then continues it past the point…
Enduring · The natural sciences · Mathematics
- Evidence
- Certainty
- Interpretation
- India
The night the exit polls were wrong
Ahead of India's 2024 general election results, exit polls converged on a sweeping majority for the incumbent alliance; the counted votes delivered something…
Enduring · The human sciences
- Evidence
- Certainty
- Global
The proof no human has read
The 1976 proof of the four colour theorem relied on computer checking of hundreds of case configurations that no mathematician could verify by hand, and parts…
Enduring · Mathematics
- Justification
- Certainty
- South Asia
Does microcredit work? Ask which study
Microcredit spread from Bangladesh on powerful anecdotes of transformation; later randomised trials found modest average effects and few of the promised…
Enduring · The human sciences
- Evidence
- Certainty
- India
The script nobody can read
Thousands of short inscriptions survive from the Indus Valley civilisation, yet after a century of attempts, no decipherment commands consensus, and scholars…
Enduring · History
- Certainty
- Interpretation
- Africa
The economy that grew 89 percent overnight
In 2014 Nigeria rebased its GDP calculation to include sectors like Nollywood and telecoms that the old 1990 framework barely saw, and the economy became…
Enduring · The human sciences
- Certainty
- Objectivity
- South Asia
Was this flood climate change?
After Pakistan's 2022 floods displaced millions, attribution scientists estimated how much more likely warming had made the rainfall, and the numbers entered…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Certainty
- Responsibility
- Global
The textbook findings that would not repeat
Large replication projects in psychology found that many celebrated effects shrank or vanished on rerun, implicating flexible analysis, publication bias and…
Enduring · The human sciences
- Justification
- Certainty
- India
How do you count wild tigers?
India's tiger estimates moved from pugmark tracing to camera traps and stripe-pattern recognition, and the headline number rose partly because the method…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Certainty
- Global
Origins, evidence and access
Investigations into COVID-19's origins produced assessments hedged at low confidence and split between agencies, with early data incomplete and access to sites…
Current · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Certainty