What can Taylor Swift teach us about Theory of Knowledge ?
A video version of this blog can be found at this link.
Some may say that the narrative songwriting, and self expressive style of Taylor Swift doesn’t necessarily lend itself to ToK, but there’s a lot about ToK that we can learn from Taylor Swift.
1. Ownership of knowledge.
As every Swiftie will know, Taylor's first six albums were bought by Scooter Braun’s Ithaca holdings for $300m in June 2019. Scooter Braun know owns the master rights, including publishing and royalties accrued. Taylor has since re-recorded the first 5 of the 6 albums sold. These re-recorded albums are known as “Taylor’s versions”.
This closely ties with the ToK theme of Ownership of Knowledge - who owns knowledge, how did they come to own it, and what does it mean to own knowledge ?
The legal ownership of Taylor’s music is described in a written laws and contracts. In ToK we can have wider definitions of the concept of ownership of knowledge.
We could argue that Taylor will always own the first 6 albums regardless of the legal ownership because she wrote them, the ideas will be forever hers, the creative imagination of the lyrics came from her, and therefore will always, inherently, be hers.
However, we could also argue that Taylor’s audience, the community of knowers known as “swifties” own the music as they have ascribe a communal, cultural and collective meaning to her work.
Finally, we could argue that you - the individual listener - the individual knower owns this music because you interpret it in your own way, you give it your individual meaning, you have a unique perspective on this music - and therefore you own your knowledge of the music.
Let’s move onto the second thing that we can learn about ToK from Taylor Swift:
2. Ethical issues arising from knowing & knowledge production.
What do the following songs have in common?:
Only The Young,
Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince,
The Man
Look what you made me do
You need to calm down
It’s a broad selection from a range of points in her career, but there is a common ToK theme in all of these songs, let’s precis the key message in each song:
Only The Young - Taylor is disappointed by the results of the 2018 midterms, and sees the hopes of young people being let down.
Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince - Taylor expresses disillusionment at the state of America under Trump
The Man - Taylor challenges the double standards and sexism that she faces in her life
Look what you made me do - Taylor takes on her enemies and critics.
You need to calm down - Taylor responds to online haters & homophobes, and shows her support for the LGBTQ+ community.
Well, all of these songs are about principles, honesty, virtuous behaviour and hope for a better society. These songs link very closely to the ToK theme of the ethical issues arising from knowing and knowledge production.
In these songs Taylor doesn’t just describe the ills of society, but she takes a stance, and makes a decision that she will take action to improve things (Taylor’s CAS programme), for example in Only The Young she says: “Don’t say you’re too tired to fight / It’s just a matter of time / Up there’s the finish line / So run, and run, and run.”
A theme that runs through all of Taylor’s songs is that it is our responsibility to make the changes that we want to see in our personal lives, and in wider society. This directly links to the ToK theme of whether knowledge is discovered, or is knowledge created ? Taylor is clearly a rationalist (rather than an empiricist) - she’s saying we don’t discover the world, we create our world.
3. Bias in the acquisition and production of knowledge.
OK, let’s move on to our third Taylor ToK Theme, let’s consider Taylor’s monumental song The Story of Us from her third studio album Speak Now, recorded in 2010.
Lyrics: "Now I'm standing alone in a crowded room and we're not speaking / And I'm dying to know is it killing you like it's killing me, yeah / I don't know what to say, since the twist of fate when it all broke down / And the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now."
Taylor Swift, The Story of Us
"The Story Of Us" - captures the theme of misunderstanding and the inability to see things from the same perspective within a relationship.
Now, as usual Taylor is developing her personal narrative, but the story of us is interesting because she’s extending her narrative to firstly recognise that her now ex-boyfriend has a different perspective, and she would like to know what that perspective is.
The Story of Us is, about perspective, congruence and incongruence, alignment and misalignment of perspective.
Similarly in ToK we are interested in perspective, congruence, incongruence, alignment and misalignment of knowledge. We're learning from Taylor - what does her future hold for her?
4. The relationship between new knowledge, pre-existing knowledge & historical knowledge.
As mentioned earlier Taylor has re-recorded all of her music that was sold in 2019, and she has spoken out about her personal feelings about the sale of her music. This echoes a common theme in her lyrics about how the past affects the present, and possibly the future.
If we look at "Long Live" from Taylor's album "Speak Now" she deals with exactly this theme of how the past influences the present and potentially the future. The song reflects on the past memories, the joy of the present, and the hope for the future.
Lyrics:
Past: "I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you" (This suggests past challenges and victories.)
Present: "Long live the walls we crashed through / I had the time of my life, with you" (This indicates the present experiences and the joys she is currently feeling.)
Future: " (The lyrics suggest hope for the future, that the memories they create now will be there to support them in future times of need.)
This is also a core theme in ToK - we look at how past knowledge affects present knowledge and future knowledge development. Linked with this we consider how current knowledge is shaped by its historical development, and whether new knowledge is better than old knowledge.
5. Is the world created or discovered ?
Moving on to Taylor Theme no. 5, let’s consider the song "Dear John" - In this song, Taylor Swift ponders whether her love could have changed someone who was set in his ways. She questions whether she was just naive to think she could have made a difference.
Lyrics: "And I'll look back in regret how I ignored when they said, / 'Run as fast as you can.' / Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong / Don't you think 19 is too young to be played by your dark twisted games, when I loved you so?"
This links to the ToK question of whether the world is created or discovered ? (the philosophical question of empiricism vs rationalism). This is exploring the question of whether we go out & find the world, or is the world created in our heads ? or It could just be the ways in which the physical world is interpreted and categorised that is internal. Or it could be the meanings that we attach to physical world knowledge that are internal.
Handing this back to Taylor, in the her reflections on Kanye West’s interruption of her acceptance speech at the 2009 VMAs Taylor asks Kanye (or all of us):
“Wasn't it easier in your lunchbox days? / Always a bigger bed to crawl into / Wasn't it beautiful when you believed in everything / And everybody believed in you? / It's alright, just wait and see / Your string of lights is still bright to me / Oh, who you are is not where you've been / You're still an innocent."
This is Taylor wondering whether people can change, or if they were always a certain way, and she makes the point that people can learn and grow from their mistakes.
In ToK terms this is Taylor exploring the empiricist vas rationalist question, and coming down on the side of rationalism, which places her in the same school as Descartes, Kant, Socrates, Plato Spinzoa, Locke and Hume.
Which neatly takes us on to today’s final point of ToK learning that we can develop from Taylor’s work.
6. Free Will vs Determinism
In the song Mine Taylor says:
"You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter / You are the best thing that's ever been mine."
In this song I think that she is delving into the idea of choosing to love despite the chances of it ending in heartbreak.Taylor seems to be making a conscious decision to love and be in a relationship even though her past and external circumstances might dictate otherwise.
What’s this got to do with ToK? I hear you cry.
Well, the previous point of Taylor’s Tok learning was a consideration of whether the world is discovered or created. Taylor decides that it is created. A created world gives us a lot more freedom of choice to create the world as we wish it to be. On the other hand, a world that we discover has already been created, and predetermined by someone, or something else.
This is the free-will vs determinism debate, it’s both a natural continuation of the empiricism vs rationalism debate, and it’s at the heart of why we study ToK. To what extent are we free to know the world as we choose, and on the other hand to what extent is the world pre-configured for us?
To give the final word on this to Taylor.
"White Horse" - In the song “White Horse” Taylor seems to discuss the conflict between the dream of an ideal, almost predestined love (a fairy tale love story that might be considered a form of determinism) and the reality of making conscious decisions in a relationship. In this case, she decides to no longer pursue a relationship that doesn't live up to her expectations, exercising her free will.
She sings: "I'm not a princess, this ain't a fairy tale / I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet / Lead her up the stairwell / This ain't Hollywood, this is a small town / I was a dreamer before you went and let me down / Now it's too late for you and your white horse, to come around
If this blog has inspired you to choose Taylor Swift, or any other element of popular culture as an object pick up a copy of Every Exhibition Prompt Explained (or a range of prompts) from this link.
If you have any suggestions for further artists, or objects from popular culture, that you would like to see analysed using ToK please leave a comment below, or email me at Daniel@ToKToday.com
Daniel, Lisbon, June 2023
If you're looking for more ToK on Popular Culture check out:
For more help with the ToK Exhibition: