TOK Entry: Natural Science and Genes

The truth of science changes once we make new discoveries. As we advance through science, we end up "disproving" old theories that we once thought were true. Thus, with each and every new discovery we make, we can only name them "theories," because hypothetically in the future someone is ought to disprove it. 

In class, we read an article titled "When Science Gets it Wrong." The article showed several examples of scientific discoveries that disproved old ones. One example was of genes and DNA. 

The genes of a chromosome were once thought to be like instruction manuals for writing who we are, our bodies. Each gene would represent some trait of our body, as believed by the biologists of the 1950s. However, it turns out that a strip of genes can actually be cut up into different areas, and create new forms of instructions. The strands are cut up into introns and exons - the introns are removed from the strand, while the exons are kept in the strand. This is happens when proteins modify the RNA strand before it exits the nucleus. This results in a totally new strand that is made out of pieces from the original DNA, that can code for other proteins in the body.

I think it is amazing how science can move forward and prove itself wrong after time. I think that science is a very humbling subject, because scientists will eventually have to admit flaws in their theories as new theories are made. When we are young, however, we were taught theories in science as if they were facts. I remember some of my old-aged science teachers, who used to attend school long, long ago, used to say that some of the theories they are teaching now were different from the ones they learned when they were young. Even in one's lifetime, "scientific facts" around us can change. I think science is amazing because we are discovering the world while we are naive. We try to discover, with the knowledge that we will never eventually be able to discovery everything in the world. Yet, people still continue to discover.

IB Course Entry: Biology

Biology is my favorite subject at school, because you can apply what you learn in class with everything you see in this world.

One of the most fascinating topics we learned just a few weeks ago is the immune system of the human body. We learned that there are white blood cells and anti-bodies that fight against the pathogens that enter our bodies. There is such a complex and ingenious system in our blood that I had no idea about.

We then got into the issue of using modern technology to help our immune system. Some advancements included the use of vaccines, antibiotics, and cloning our anti-bodies using the cells of mice. Our biology class then side tracked into a conversation about CSI and other criminal movies, about snake bites and venom. We then questioned: was this technology actually helping humans advance, or hurting us?

In a way, modern medicine allows humans to "play god," and avoid sickness and death. Meanwhile, our population growth exponentially increases. We are left on a crowded earth, harming the environment around us. Our medicine can also harm humans as well. Viruses and known to mutate very quickly. When we use antibiotics, we are killing off the weak viruses and bacteria in our bodies. The stronger viruses, the ones that have mutated, are able to survive and reproduce in our bodies. Patients must then intake a stronger anti-biotic. It is almost a dangerous, repeating cycle.

I think that technology in science has helped humans advance in many ways, but it has also allowed us to live in an unnatural environment. I do wish that everyone in our world remain healthy and happy, but technology in science is a power that must be held by responsible, wise people.

IB Course Entry, Music: Modes and Cadences

Music, after all, is just a collection of sound frequencies produced by instruments or speakers that enter our ears. How does music make us feel? How does it make us feel happy, sad, angry, or annoyed?

During our course of IB Music, we learned about musical cadences and modes. Musical cadences is a change in music intervals at the end of a phrase. They are like small conclusions. When you hear the end of a verse or chorus, you are hearing a cadence. Modes consist of major and minor modes, as well as other complex ones.

In music class, we are required to interpret cadences and modes both from looking at them on music, and hearing them. The interesting thing was that these cadences and modes could be interpreted into emotions. The minor mode, for example, conjures a very sad and melancholy emotion, while the major mode often generates a happy and cheery feeling.

There is a similar concept with cadences. The picture above consists of four types of cadences we learned in music class: authentic cadence (or perfect cadence), half cadence (or imperfect cadence), plagal cadence, and deceptive cadence (also called surprise cadence). Each of these cadences, no matter what key they are in, generate a different feeling of conclusion to the end of a musical phrase. Cadences are very mathematical. The authentic cadences is the movement of I - V - I , which means the chord of the first note of the scale, the fifth note of the scale, then back to the first (example: in C major: C major - G major - C major). The result is a conclusion that sounds like a perfect end to a song. Returning back to the tonic (I, first note of a scale), makes us feel that the song is very complete.

The plagal cadence is also called the "Amen cadence," because it is often used in church songs and hymns (I - IV - I). The very familiar "Ah~men" at the end of any generic hymnal song is actually a plagal cadence. The result is a holy and concluding finish.

The deceptive and half cadences both sound unexpected. They both surprise us, because it appears that they will return back to the tonic (first note of a scale). But it doesn't. The result is that listeners are surprised. Many composers use this strategy in their pieces.

Below is a Youtube video showing audio examples of cadences.

I thought it was amazing that frequencies and maths of music can generate emotions in people. I think this relationship is something I'd like to investigate in more in the future.

TOK Entry: Proper Sampling

Facts appear a lot more valid when they are supported by numbers. Human Science attempt to study the way people act through experiments or surveying. Data is something that allows human sciences, such as psychology or sociology, to claim certain facts as true.

However, in TOK class, we discussed that there were many possible errors in the sampling of people. There are many ways in which questions can be asked to manipulate an answer from the participants. Also, certain surveys that are made public are often only taken by certain groups of people. It is difficult to find a perfect sample of people that can represent a whole group, or even a whole nation. A sampled view that is not distributed well can result in skewed data.

The example we were given in class was from an article titled "Sex Surveys." The article discussed that surveys of "How often do you have sex" were distributed to a public magazine. The results from this survey were to represent the general number of adults / teens having sex, and how frequently they had sex.

However, the article explained that people who engaged in a lot of sex were more likely to answer the survey question. This can greatly skew the outcomes of the data, because the sample had more people who were likely to answer similarly the question in the survey.

Like a batch of colorful M&Ms, sampling for Human Sciences must consider all diverse people. This way, sociologists and psychologists can distribute accurate conclusions and find ways to improve human interactions. If surveys are conducted with bias, it can affect how people and society think and expect from one another. If a survey claimed that people had sex very often, yet the survey sample was biased, then the conclusions of the survey would be inaccurate. However, because of the results of the survey, many people  still go one believing that the survey was true.

I think Human Sciences have a lot of power, and should be responsible for that power.

IB Course Entry, Psychology: Ethics or Experiments?

I take IB Psychology. In the beginning of the IB Psychology course, all students are taught "Research Methods," the correct and accurate way of conducting a psychological experiment. We learned how to use repeated measures, repeated trials, ways to avoid expectation biases, and so fourth. Then we went into the issue of ethics. 

Ethics. It sort of doesn't make sense. There is a rule in psychology, that participants should not be deceived, harmed in any sort, that they aren't required to take an experiment, that they must be debriefed about the experiment, confidentiality of the participant, and etc. However, if the experiment breaks some codes of ethics but yields a very precious discovery, then the experiment is acceptable. This is because the results of the experiment are worth more than the hurt done to the participants.

This concept is similar to the “Ends and Means” ethics presentation from class. If the results of an questionable action are very good, then the results will justify the consequences. A famous psychological study of ethics is the one by Milgram (1961). Milgram’s study tested normal people on their obedience to authority. He deceived participants into thinking they were harming, and even killing a victim with an electric switch. The results showed that people were willing to follow authority, even to someone else’s great harm. It is still debated by many whether the findings of this experiment were ethical, and it started a whole revolution about ethical means in an experiment. 

In a more recent study I read, cats were used to test brain connections with vision. The experimenters covered one eye of multiple cats since they were born, and uncovered them only until they were close to maturing. The experimenters found that the eye that was covered was blind, because connections were not made during a special period in the cats’ maturation. I was very sad when I heard that the cats were blinded. I wasn’t exactly sure if the psychologists had done the right thing, even for the sake of study. I think there should be a better balance between ethics and the need for data.

Personal Entry: How Old is the Earth?

One late night while I attempted to rid the pressure of Extended Essays and college essays, I decided to look up "How old is the earth?" on Google out of boredom. 

I came across this interesting article: How does the Bible teach 6000 years?

The article, by creation.com, stated that through factual dates and lifespans of people recorded in the bible, chronogenealogists are able to calculate the years back to when Adam and Eve were first created, and back to when the rest of the world was created on the "first day." (Chronogenealogy is the study of life span between generations. I'm not sure of chronogealogists is a real word, but it makes this blog post sound smart.) The article then explained the simplicity of the calculations: Adam had his son when he was 130, Jacob was 130 years old when Israel moved into Egypt, the israelites were enslaved in Egypt for 430 years, and so forth. Tracing these biblical accounts of events and people, summing them up, and considering room for error, apparently adds up to 6150 years, plus or minus 50 years. 

Pretty cool. Adding up chronogeneologies of people in the bible would make a great hobby - but does it give the truth? According to the article, however, "It’s clear that from the very first verse of Genesis, the Bible is concerned with giving a factual account of how God has interacted with the earth. This means that it must give historically accurate details, as well as being theologically accurate. In fact, what we believe about God is based on historical claims, so if the history is inaccurate, then the theology must be as well." I wasn't so sure if I agreed with this statement. There are many Christians who believe that the words of the bible is true, but think the earth is much, much older than 6000 years. Some Christians also take the words of the bible "figuratively," and, like many of Jesus' figurative parables and stories, don't think that God invented the world in literally seven days. 

I still wasn't sure of my opinion, but I wasn't going to totally reject this article. I then started to google for information that went against the 6000 year theory. When one thinks of calculating time in objects, many of us think of carbon dating, in which an organism can be dated by its C-14 decay. So, I decided to google "Does carbon dating disprove the bible?" and came across an article by trueauthority.com. The article surprised me a little with its addressing of the many misconceptions and factors that could affect the data of carbon dating. While carbon dating measures the decay of carbon in a once-living object, the article addressed that decay of C-14 in an object can be inconsistent, therefore yielding data that may not match with when the organism was actually living. Accurate carbon dating also requires that the organism remain in an enclosed closed system for several thousand years, not affected by loss or gain of isotopes. Its difficult for scientists to find out whether or not a object was enclosed. 

So, I realized that there can be errors both in the bible and in carbon-dating. Yet, many people are more reluctant to believe in the written bible than science. In a way, it seems like science is a religion in itself. Can we really question a person's faith, based on when they think that the earth was created, as suggested in the first article? I don't think so. Personally, I believe in God not because of when he created the world, but because he loves each of us. It's inevitable but also creative that people become caught up with facts and dates and truths, but seeing our technological advancements today, and seeing that we still question the same things as ancient primitive societies once did, I think the world can handle going on with life without knowing when earth was created.