"Don't judge a book by its cover" [slightly TOK]

[Marissa Bekedam]

Well everyone knows the common saying "Don't judge a book by its cover"

I am planning to use this in my TOK essay, as an example of how this is intuition used badly because

often judgements are wrong etc.

Could anyone help to articulate this properly. Using TOK diction etc.

Thank you

[kemo]

The English idiom "don't judge a book by its cover" is a metaphorical phrase which means "you shouldn't prejudge the worth or value of something, by its outward appearance alone

Don't judge a book by its cover means not to judge people or things by what they look like from the outside. People shouldn't be judged by how they look but be judged by their actions. It actually means that people cannot be judged by what they appear like to you at first, it is necessary to get to know them and "read" them before you can judge them It means not to judge people by the way they look or act. Something very powerful can be inside them.

it means dont judge a person on how they look and only judge them on who they really are!

If you judge a book by it's cover is to judge someone or something before you get to know them or try it. Such as if someone looks funny and you don't know them you shouldn't make fun of them because they could turn out to be the nicest person you ever met. Also if someone advertises for a product and you don't think it will work you shouldn't because it might work really good and it will be fun and/or good for you to have. On the other hand something could look good and be really bad. So if someone is really pretty that doesn't mean 'Oh, that person is really pretty they must be nice!' They could be really stuck up and mean. Or if something looks shiny and new and people on TV. say it works really good it could be bad.

from wikipedia and wikianswers.

i would also recomend this site

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dont-judge-this-book-by-its-cover/

[Sandwich]

The "don't judge a book by its cover" phenomenon is probably the most simple TOK concept to grasp. In that sense it would be incredibly easy to do a presentation on, but also ridiculously boring. Personally I would try to find something at least slightly more interesting/challenging. "Sometimes intuition lets us down" is a concept a 7 year old could understand and explain.

Regardless of whether you continue with this topic or try to think of something a little more creative and interesting, you need to include a knowledge issue in your presentation. This is a real-life example of your TOK topic. For the topic you've picked this could be literally anything, like the fact that a straight-handled spoon looks different when we put it into water... or that a book with a bad cover can be a good read. If you can come up with a more advanced and interesting real life issue which is actually intellectually relevant, that would almost certainly get you a better mark.

Really, I can't think of a more boring TOK presentation topic! Whilst this is related to TOK I would really really encourage you to try and think beyond this one a little bit. I don't really see how you could get anything at all insightful out of this and actually earn many marks.

[Marissa Bekedam]

Thanks Kemo that website is the exact thing i was looking for. Your other points were also useful :-)

[Arrowhead]

I have to agree with Sandwich on this one. This is a pretty simplistic topic and rather dry to boot. Perhaps consider something more challenging?

Food for thought.