Heather McAllister

22 of September 2011

Theory of Knowledge:
a) Explain the concept of knowledge as justified true belief. The concept of knowledge as a justified true belief consists of three components which are truth, belief and justification. Truth is one step further than belief, it is believing beyond reasonable doubt. Though thinking something is true does not always make it true. Belief is confidence one has in the truth. To believe in something does not mean the subject has to be true or proved but you have to have a inner conscience telling you it is true for you to believe. Justification, truths and beliefs need to be justified is some way or another. We cannot not believe something without it having been justified in some kind of way. Ways of justifying something can be language perception reasoning or emotion. Knowledge as a justified belief: What distinguishes knowledge from justified belief is justified truth. Belief is a form of theory but a justified true belief is knowledge; it is knowledge because you have enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt to support this initial belief. For example: A belief is a perception of something that you would consider to be true. For example you may believe while you lie in your bed in the morning that it is sunny outside, but it is not until you step outside and experience the sunshine that you can say that this belief is true. Therefore you now have the knowledge that it is sunny outside and it has been justified. Though if you had stepped outside and found it to be raining you would have realized your belief of sunshine is not true as you has been proven wrong.

Heather McAllister

22 of September 2011

b) Clearly identify a well-established scientific knowledge claim and convince the reader that it is true beyond reasonable doubt. A well established scientific knowledge would be that electrons are organized into shells (2,8,8). Electron configuration was first thought of because Bohr model of the atom and it is still common to speak of shells and subshells. The chemical properties of an atom are dependent on the way its electrons are arranged. Building the atoms with electrons is like stacking a bookcase. Each energy level can hold a limited number of electrons. Two electrons in the first shell, 8 electrons in the next shell and 8 electrons in the valence shell. The principal of electron shells was proposed by Arnold Sommerfeld's modification of the Bohr model. We can us scientific experiment to verify this claim. Such as the line spectrum which is evidence to suggest that electrons are placed in shells. This gives us valuable information about arrangement of electrons in an atom as you get discrete lines. Which suggest that a set amount of energy is released when electrons jump from shell to shell. Ionization energies are the required to remove successive electrons from an atom. The measurement of these ionization energies shows distinct steps which can be associated with full shells again strongly supporting the claim that electrons are organized in shells around a central atomic nucleus.

Heather McAllister

22 of September 2011

c) Identify a well-established opinion about something of your choice and explain why it might be difficult to claim to know it is true. Global warming exists A well established opinion might be that there is such a thing as global warming. It has been claimed that global warming is affecting our planet. According to scientist it is what is causing sea levels and temperatures to rise. The concept of global warming is plausible given the increased pollution which man has emitted but is it true. We have been told that with global warming we are to expect rising temperatures when in fact temperatures have been falling over the past decade. Temperatures have been dropping in an unpredictable way over the past year. Last winter, the northern hemisphere saw its greatest snow cover since 1966. Though when scientist told us that the earth was heating up as a result to global warming they didnt mention that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than today. So what if earth is heating up the way it did once before? Research shows that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s. Finally it was also said that the polar ice caps where melting as a result of global warming but the Arctics ice caps have be growing and are bigger than this time last year. Additionally, Antarctic sea-ice this year reached its highest level since satellite records began in 1979. Also Polar bear numbers are at record levels. Therefore is there such a thing as global warming. Could global warming just be a way of forcing governments to invest in wind farms and solar panels? Though also the world atmosphere is very complex and it is very difficult to set up reliable experiments which isolate single variables for analysis there any experiments performed to test global warming are partially unreliable. To come to a conclusion todays increase global temperatures may just be within the normal limits of variation of the earths temperature. Therefore I feel it is hard to prove the claim global warming exists.