Writing a TOK Essay (Part III): Definitions

Quite often, students ask me how terms ought to be defined. Most of them will just take a whack at a dictionary and pick one of the definitions therein. That approach is fine, but it doesn't show evidence of thought other than that required to crack open a dictionary and search it alphabetically.

There are several ways to define a term without simply copying its definition from a dictionary. Here are a few.

1. Etymological approach: Going to a website like the Online Etymology Dictionary will give you an insight as to what a word has meant in the past. This comes from its roots — its 'genealogy' if you like. The OEtD shows how the word came to be the way it is, and thus what its original sense used to be and still is. Careful use allows you to differentiate between generally synonymous words like 'fault' and 'blame', which in many other dictionaries come up looking the same. See, for example, this post and any with the 'Etymology' tag.

2. Historical approach: This is like the etymological approach, except that you look at past usages of a word, and also other words or phrases used in its place. For example, the word 'science' has been used to denote technical skill, technology, engineering and other applications of a rigorous methodology. Its antecedents include terms like 'natural history' (that is, the observation and analysis of material phenomena) and 'natural philosophy' (that is, the consideration of abstract reasoning based on actual events). All this gives you a rough idea of what science really is.

3. Contextual/metaphorical approach: This is a look at the cultural context, often combined with some ability to handle a term metaphorically. Sometimes, words are defined counter-intuitively and the solid technical approaches of (1) and (2) above won't quite work. This is true for terms like 'social sciences', of which some professor I know once said, "They are neither social, nor sciences." (It's true for terms like 'independent schools' in the Atlantean context too — somebody once said, "They are neither independent nor schools." I thought that was a little bit much though.) Of course, it all depends on what you mean by 'independent' and 'school' — and that is where the contextual approach is required: you look into the usage within the context and ask, "In what sense is economics (for example) 'social', and in what sense is it a 'science'?" You can do fantastic things with questions like, "In what ways is a cauliflower a flower?"

I'll stop here. But the basic principles of defining terms, and then a whole question, rely on the student using the brain to identify the key words that need definitions first, and then applying a few common-sense principles (like those above) to seek definitions favourable to the forthcoming argument/discussion.