Question 1: Are facts alone enough to prove a claim? Discuss with reference to any two areas of knowledge.

Guiding Questions

  • What are facts? 

    • Information? Truth? Evidence? How might it be different from interpretation?

    • You will need to define what facts means for the AOKs you choose. What might that be for art should you choose that AOK?

  • What is a claim? 

    • Hypothesis? Is it different from a theory? Is it true? What constitutes a claim?

  • What does it mean to prove something? 

    • Check that it is true? Confirm its validity?

  • “Alone enough” 

    • Can we rely purely on facts? In proving a claim, what else might someone do beyond just using facts? What else do knowledge producers consider (e.g. a historian looking at other perspectives, a scientist using past theories)? 

    • How else do we prove something? (answering this question perhaps will help you find your thesis for the essay) 

Question Analysis

For this question, we first need a specific definition of what facts are with respect to the areas of knowledge (AOKs) chosen. The word “prove” is usually something we only use in the area of mathematics so for your chosen AOKs, also come up with your personal definition of what proving a claim means (e.g. natural sciences - falsifying a hypothesis).

Finding points for this question is relatively straightforward because you just need to discuss whether facts alone can prove a claim (i.e. can we rely entirely on facts) or whether there are other aspects of the AOKs chosen that we can consider (e.g. interpretation). It would be good to look into the steps that knowledge producers in each of these AOKs go about proving their claim. This might allow you to see whether they use facts or even other methods and processes. The more precise your definition of what facts are, the easier it will be to differentiate between facts and other methods that knowledge producers use in proving their claims. 

A very simple example for the natural sciences is first to agree with the statement and find some example where facts lead to a conclusion. However, for a counterpoint, you might mention that there is a gap between getting from the facts to the conclusion and maybe one thing that scientists do is to interpret the data. Thus, scientists do not just rely on facts, but other components of the knowledge production process to reach a conclusion.

Potential AOKs: the natural sciences, the human sciences, history