Areas of Knowledge

This topic came up again while I was in discussion mode with a student. "What's an Area of Knowledge?" I asked.

The young person in front of me looked terrifyingly blank. "They didn't teach us that!"

"Come on, I'm sure they did. You can't have a Theory of Knowledge course without defining 'Area of Knowledge', surely."

"Oh, you mean things like History, Art, Chemistry... ?"

"That's called 'attempting to define by example'. You're expecting ME to define AoK by looking at things you claim are AoKs. But you can't claim they are distinct AoKs without some benchmark to compare them to!"

"So, sir, what's an AoK?"

"That would be telling. Let's make it your homework. Meanwhile... what's a Way of Knowing?"

"They told us what things were Ways of Knowing, but they didn't define 'Way of Knowing' so we didn't have a benchmark to determine if the things they claimed were 'Ways of Knowing' were actually 'Ways of Knowing'."

(Rolling eyes.)

"At least we're making some progress here..."