2021 RI KI Y6 Prelim P2

This document consists of 4 printed pages [Turn over RAFFLES INSTITUTION 2021 Year 6 Preliminary Examination Higher 2 Knowledge and Inquiry 9759/02 Paper 2 21 September 2021 2 hours Additional Materials: Answer Booklet READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST Do not turn this sheet over until you are told to do so. Write your name and CT group on all the work you hand in. Write in dark blue or black ink. Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid/tape. Start each section on a fresh sheet of paper. Section A Answer Question 1. Section B Answer any two questions. Begin each response on a new page. The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

2 2021 RI KI Y6 PRELIM P2 Section A You must answer question one. 1 Many people think that experimentation is the best way of gaining knowledge of the world because of the success of science in the past two centuries. Don’t get me wrong: I love science and where it has brought us. Without it, we would not have magnificent architecture, advanced technology or even the hope of getting to the moon. But the success of science aside, experimentation cannot tell us everything about how everything works. Practically speaking, experimentation is not always possible. We cannot move a planet or change the conditions of a planetary system just to isolate a variable in order to test some hypothesis we have about the universe. We cannot tell people to abort more babies just to see if an increase in abortion rate leads to a decrease in crime rate. That would not only be unethical but impossible to control. Similarly, we cannot go back in time to find out if it was the shame and persecution Germany underwent post-WWI that started Hitler on a warpath as opposed to his rejection from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, in a bid to fulfill his dream to be a painter. In fact , even if experimentation were possible, it is not the best way to justify knowledge. The artificiality of experiments done in a laboratory vitiates any possibility of generalizability beyond the confines of the laboratory , especially with regard to claims in social science . The results of our experiments also cannot objectively determine our theory choice. Take for example the phenomenon of rain. Science tells us that rain occurs when there is a sufficient build-up of moisture in the air, but an Amazonian tribe could easily point to a rain dance shaman holding the belief that his dance convinced the rain gods to release rain. There just is no way to determine between these theories because they are e mpirically equivalent. To make matters worse, we can never falsify enough hypotheses to claim that we are getting closer to the truth. Similarly, no amount of experimentation can prove that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees, that 1+1=2, or tell us what we ought to do in life. Sm