LR Drill Set 3, Question 7
Many historians theorize that the achievements of some(73 more words not shown)
The conclusion of the argument(10 more words not shown)
- ARadical transformations in(16 more words not shown)
- BNo widespread belief(17 more words not shown)
- CNo one can(18 more words not shown)
- DThe technological advances(18 more words not shown)
- EThe notion that(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A change can happen before people recognize how big it was.
The historians describe a shift from thinking of nature as an organic being to thinking of it in purely mechanical terms. Their claim has two parts: seventeenth-century scientists advanced technology and changed how people understood nature. The author attacks the second part because the belief in that radical change appeared only in the twentieth century.
But why couldn't later historians recognize a change the participants didn't notice? Someone can help reshape a field without realizing at the time that future generations will describe the work as a turning point. The gap between an event and its recognition doesn't by itself show the event never happened.
To make this argument work, we'd have to rule out that possibility.
What we’re looking for
The stem asks for an assumption that makes the conclusion follow. My prediction is that participating in such a transformation requires believing it has occurred. If the participants would have to recognize it, then the absence of that belief in their era becomes a reason the claimed transformation couldn't have happened then.
Working the answers
- A
This points the other way. If transformations can be recognized only with help from later generations' commentary, we should expect recognition to arrive later. The twentieth-century belief could then be compatible with a seventeenth-century transformation. A supports our objection rather than eliminating it.
- B
This says a widespread belief in a transformation requires an actual transformation. It doesn't say an actual transformation requires belief at the time. The argument needs to use the earlier absence of belief to rule out the earlier event, and B doesn't permit that. It also introduces a claim about the belief being widespread, which the passage doesn't establish.
- CCorrect
Under this rule, anyone participating in a radical transformation must believe that the transformation has occurred. But the passage says that belief did not arise until the twentieth century. Seventeenth-century scientists therefore couldn't have participated in the transformation the historians describe. C closes the exact gap between no contemporary recognition and no such contemporary transformation.
- D
Technological progress not requiring mechanical thinking doesn't establish that mechanical thinking never developed. Both could have occurred even if one wasn't required for the other. The disputed part of the theory is the radical change in thought, and D doesn't rule it out.
- E
This would explain why seventeenth-century people lacked the concept of a collective transformation in thought. It still wouldn't establish that their thinking couldn't change in a way later observers described as radical. E reinforces the late recognition without supplying the missing rule that occurrence requires recognition.
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