30 FOR TOK: IB ASTRONOMY: THE THINKING BEHIND SUBJECT

When you look at a star, you are seeing the past. When astronomers study the universe, they are studying a reality so vast, so old, and so remote that ordinary ways of knowing are stretched to their limits and sometimes beyond them. This book explores what that means. 30 For 30 TOK: IB Astronomy is the thirteenth book in the 30 For 30 TOK series, which pairs thirty IB diploma subjects with thirty searching questions about the nature of the knowledge it produces. This volume focuses on the IB Astronomy course, asking questions about inference, observation, modelling, and the profound epistemological challenges of knowing a universe that cannot be visited, manipulated, or directly observed in any straightforward sense. From the epistemic status of dark matter and dark energy to the question of what it means for the Big Bang to have no "before", from the limits of the observable universe to the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, the thirty questions in this book press on what astronomical knowledge is and what it cannot be. Sample responses model what careful, philosophically informed thinking about the science of the cosmos looks like in practice. Designed for IB Astronomy students, teachers, TOK educators, and anyone who has looked at the night sky and felt simultaneously small and astonished.

Pages: 217, Paperback, Independently published