Tok Essay - “it Is only Knowledge Produced with Difficulty That We Truly Value” to What Extent Do You Agree with This Statement?

I believe it is true that humans most value knowledge that is produced with difficulty. This can be explored through the lens of science, history, and math. Everyone has different views, even on the topic of knowledge’s value. The production of knowledge comes from a variety of sources, whether it be a discovery by an individual or even a group. Anton Chekhov once stated, “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice”. But knowledge has value before its application; it starts with its creation. The first step is to understand that not all knowledge is valuable. Something that has significance is valued because it is useful. The more difficult it was to gain, the more value it has in an application. Knowledge is experience that produces information and skills and something that is hard to understand or accomplish can be even more worthwhile. Although there is some dispute, I agree with the statement that knowledge produced with difficulty is valued more than easily produced knowledge. We are less likely to take knowledge for granted that way, it affirms our skills as investigators, and it challenges us to continually seek out answers, no matter how vague or hard to grasp they may be.

Knowledge produced through a long, arduous process is less likely to be taken for granted. Through the lens of natural science, Charles Darwin had a lifelong goal and project which involved tremendous amounts of study and research, comparing the DNA strands among organisms. He continued this difficult process for many years even though there was a real possibility that all of his work being meaningless if nothing significant was discovered or if his theories were not proven. Although he did not invent anything, he contributed greatly to the scientific community by changing the way we think about life. By developing and proposing a theory about evolution, he discovered the reality of natural selection and speciation. If Darwin had not devoted so much time into this research, none of these discoveries would have been made and the way we view the natural world would probably be wrong and lead to false interpretations and research. It could be taken advantage of (not appreciated) by those who did not directly discover it. However, even though other researchers and scientists have come to support his work. It was Darwin who received the credit for the theory of natural selection. Alfred Russel Wallace worked off of Darwin’s ideas to create his own ideas about evolution such as geographical distribution of animal species. But, the original credit goes to Darwin, and Wallace makes that clear. Without Darwin as the base of his research, Wallace would not have made his own discovery. It had long processes in their production of knowledge. It does not come out of thin air, knowledge is built through the actions of people. There is a foundation of knowledge in many instances that researchers use to dig deeper and produce their own discoveries. Because these people went through the arduous process, their work is not taken for granted by themselves, but those not involved, such as the general public are more likely to take it for granted. They did not contribute nor know how difficult it was to create. An ordinary citizen may take the knowledge as something that is available and was created without their contribution. Then in that sense the value of knowledge has diminished as someone with no involvement with the knowledge takes it for granted. The value increases from its originator because they were the primary source of its creation and have the full understanding and experience of it.

Knowledge that was difficult to produce confirms our skills of investigation and determination. Through a historical lens, investigation, such as finding documents, sources, translating, interpreting results, hones our skills. We learn what works and what doesn’t, and that in turn acts as a reward once we achieve our goal of finding it. One cannot trust a translation completely because there is no perfect way to translate. There are many interpretations and word substitutions, synonyms that might be one way out of many to replace a word in another language. That in itself could change the meaning of the original piece entirely. In Spanish, one word can have a different meaning in different contexts. Some things are even described by different words depending on the country. That can alter the understanding of one sentence or even the true symbolic meaning of a poem. Translators are professionals who have had a lot of practice in this field. They understand which words to use when translating a sentence or concept from English to another language, or vice versa, so there is minimal lost in translation. The American Translators Association (ATA) was established to advance the translation and interpreting professions and foster the professional development of individual translators and interpreters. There are organizations such as this one where translators are very advanced and are known for their accuracy. Although there are sites that automatically translate from language to language, those are unreliable when it comes to translating a phrase or a longer part of a sentence. There are computer generated programs that automatically translate and that diminishes the value of knowledge learning a language because it