TOK ESSAY

“Suspension of Disbelief” is an essential feature of theatre. Is it essential in other

areas of knowledge? Develop your answer with reference to two areas of

knowledge.

To suspend beliefs is not equal as to avoid knowledge, it is equal to adopting

knowledge in different ways. Suspension of Disbelief is a state of mind in whic h

humans tend to leave a side their own personal beliefs about knowledge and take as

facts or truth what is being offered to them. Theater is a field of the arts and it is

essential to have a feature like suspension of disbelief for it to work. Audiences are

attracted and drawned into theater among other forms of arts because they are able to

travel into the setting being depicted in such works, most of the times such settings

are not phisically real so audiences must be able to suspend their current beliefs and

go along the purpose and setting of the work in motion. To suspend beliefs require the

adaptation of several ways of knowing, for example sense and perception. One must

be able to set aside current perceptions in order to absorb what is being offered in

theater, and that also applies to more areas of knowledge like art and science.

Art is one area of knowledge in which suspension of disbelief is a very

important factor. Artists take their imagination to create paintings or sculptures that

are surreal and do not follow any logical or methodical way of thinking. I believe that

there is a way to understand what cannot be understood, and to marvel at what is

merely ordinary. Suspending one´s disbelief opens up a gate in our imaginations,

taking us to places we never thought could exist, and making us believe that was is

not true, is true. It is a marvelous phenomenon, likely exclusive to us humans, to be

able to block reason for an instant, and live in a world of dreams. Artists like Salvador

Dalí are immortalized for their ability to create surreal landscapes and images that

define basic, common-sense beliefs like the basic laws of physics. Salvador Dalí is

recognized because of his majestic ways of depicting objects in surreal and fantastica l

ways. The first time I saw a painting by Salvador Dalí, I could not even understand

the thing I was looking at. The painting depicted a desert in the background with

different types of clocks of all sizes simply melting like they where chocolate or any

malleable object. The clocks were bent along walls and trees, I was thirteen years old

and at that point in my life I have never seen a clock bend that way, so I could not

understand the painting. As I grew older and did research about the artist, I discovered

there was no real physical explanation behind that piece of work, it was simply the

way the artist decided to depict the clocks. Now I understand how is it that the artist

could create that painting. He focused on the surreal thoughts that went through his

mind, creating a masterpiece. I did the same thing to understand his work

, as I had to suspend my belief of how certain objects look and behave in order to be

able to fully understand and appreciate the famous piece of art. Suspension of

disbelief is then necessary for art to work at its fullest extent, in cinema and

videogames it is also a very essential factors so that we as knowers can use our ways

of knowing to comprehend and appreciate the works of arts we see. Movie directors

and video game developers have in their disposal the ability to create worlds never

seen to man, and only by suspending beliefs such worlds will be appreciated. Art is an

area of knowledge that needs to be taken into consideration with a different state of

mind as math for example, the analytical side of the brain needs to rest so that the

creative side of the brain can fully opérate within the boundries of our ways of

knowing just like sense and perception. Another area of knowledge that goes hand in
 hand with suspension of disbelief is faith, one must trust what is seeing for art to work,

Comentado [CARS1]: Mostly describing. There is very even if it does not follow their faith tendecies.
limited 2nd order analysis showing application of TOK
concepts
Science is another area of knowledge in which suspension of disbelief must

come into action. Every scientific discovery starts out as a theory that needs to be

tested over a repeated number of times for it to pass as a scientific law, a proven

theory in other words. When theories are proposed, more often than not, they are

Comentado [CARS2]: Why? Explore this? totally new to current conceptions and beliefs about the scientific world, but must be
This is the TOK door. You must go in!!!!
taken into account up to a certain extent for them to be able to work, until proven

Comentado [CARS3]: How can you prove wrong? Is that wrong, of course. Data that can deny such theories, is the way in which they can be
disbelief?
Ask yourself knowledge questions to explore your knowledge
statements and claims.
proven wrong, as well as denial and avoiding suspension of disbelief, though that ma y

not be the most reliable course to take, as there would be no basis to accusations made

on such assumptions. It can be seen all throughout our historical records, how new

theories and beliefs are often rejected at first. This is because people will not suspend

their disbelief, and try to break free of their past conceptions, making it hard to create

a shift in paradigm so that new knowledge can be accepted. This is one of the uses

that suspension of disbelief can have. When new theories are proposed, our current

stigmas and paradigms interfere out interpretation of knowledge, we turn our heads

around and avoid any sign of different knowledge, suspension of disbelief comes into

action in science and it allows us to interpret new knowledge and try to fit it into our

own current conceptions, creating new and updated knowledge. Still, it is essential to

have criteria and filters regarding science, even if we suspend our beliefs, they must

be suspended to a certain extent until such new theories are proven true, because if

not we then are promoting the adaptation of fake knowledge, which leads to

ignorance. Suspension of disbelief is the starting point, but it will not be wise to

suspend our beliefs entirely when it comes to science, because in science the
analytical part of the brain is the one who must act and absorb the knowlege, not the

creative part of the brain. Ways of knowing like sense/perception and faith do not

play such a big role in science and they must be used carefully to avoid the spread of

misconceptions and ambiguous thoughts. The landing of the moon is an event that

struck millions of people around the world. My father when he was little witnessed

the event and felt cheated by the news, he did not believe it to be true and was in a

state of trance for several months. He had never seen anything like that and chose not

to suspend his beliefs and accept that a man had landed on the moon. In an example

such as this one, suspension of disbelief was necessary for him to be amazed by this

amazing human feat, but he was not able because of that. That is why in science it is

important to suspend one’s beliefs and absorb new knowledge until proven otherwise.

Suspension of disbelief is then necessary in both the arts and science because

it gives humans the ability to take into consideration differents ways of knowing and

differents ways to analyze knowledge. Knowledge is dfferent in every area and it

must be taken into account and analyzed in different ways, and by suspending one’s

beliefs then the ability to learn increases because the bias and prejudice held before

dissapear and the knowledge being shown at the moment is seized with much more

enthusiam.