Writing a TOK Essay (Part V): Structuring the Argument

One might argue that unfolding an argument is as good as structuring it. That's not quite true. You can unfold a dress, but structuring it so that it unfolds nicely is a fine art.

In general, writing any essay begins with a quick survey of the key ideas. What is the question explicitly about? What is it implicitly about? Are you imagining the implicit? (Strictly speaking, what is implicit is what you can infer from the bare text, by use of logic alone, but within the ToK context.)

For example, supposing you're looking at a question that talks about language and reason being important in history. The choice of history as the area of knowledge or discipline is not unexpected; after all, history is one of the key disciplines in the overarching framework of human knowledge. However, the choice of language and reason implies that they are being set up as two interlocking parts of the definition of history; they're not necessarily in opposition, but they at the very least to be seen as complementary.

Defining history, language and reason is simple. Just take care to define history as an area of knowledge and the other two as ways of knowing — after all, this is in the context of writing a ToK essay. You also need to know that the main problem of history is veracity — how do you know that history is real? What are the tests for valid histories?

Once you've laid the definitional groundwork, you need to see how language and reason interact in the construction of history. Language is the medium that supplies (or conveys) much of the raw material, reason is the process through which the material is assembled into a useful structure.

Then point out the several problems of language in terms of information loss (at the source, during transmission, failure of recording, failure of reception, etc) and do a few paragraphs with examples about that. Follow that with the problems of reason in terms of information construction (validity, reliability, utility etc) and do a few paragraphs with examples as well.

You can now write about how these problems might be overcome, then summarise the roles of language and reason in the domain of history. Point out how histories can be improved by the proper application of the historian's discernment and artifice, as a conclusion based on your earlier paragraphs dealing with problems.

And... you're done.

Structure is easy: definitions, issues, problems, disposing of problems, conclusions based on what has been raised. You've probably got weeks to do it, and you probably only need two or three days. Anyone who is using more time than that is obviously wasting time somewhere.