LR Drill Set 4, Question 8
Historian: Some historians of science consider there generally(64 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(29 more words not shown)
- ASome prominent historians(10 more words not shown)
- BHistorians who focus(14 more words not shown)
- CA very large(11 more words not shown)
- DThose scientists who(18 more words not shown)
- EUnderstanding a revolutionary(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What are these historians missing?
I can understand the attraction of revolutionary science. A movement that changes how people think about nature may be more exciting to study than work that continues within established ideas. The passage gives us a specific distinction: normal science accepts its field's preconceptions, while revolutionary science rejects some of them. We should use that distinction rather than supply our own meaning of “revolutionary.”
But why does studying only the revolution prevent a complete understanding of that revolution? The historian needs to explain why the normal science also matters. Maybe understanding what changed requires understanding what scientists believed before the change. Knowing that a movement rejected an idea isn't the same as knowing what that idea was or why rejecting it mattered.
What we’re looking for
That's the connection I'd look for in a strengthener: to understand the revolutionary movement fully, historians need to understand the normal science it responds to. We need a reason this knowledge matters to the particular understanding the historian says is incomplete.
Working the answers
- A
Some historians may reject this way of dividing science. That tells us about disagreement over the categories, not about what historians who focus on revolutionary movements need to understand. A doesn't establish that studying normal science is necessary to understand a revolution within the framework the argument uses.
- B
Underestimating the importance of normal science isn't necessarily the same as misunderstanding a revolutionary movement. A historian could rate ordinary advances too low yet still understand the movement being studied. We need a connection between knowledge of normal science and understanding the revolution, not merely a criticism of how much credit normal science receives.
- C
A subject can account for most research without being required background for every narrower study. Imagine a historian focused on one particular scientific shift. The sheer quantity of normal research doesn't show which parts of it that historian must understand. C makes normal science sound substantial without supplying the missing connection.
- D
Resistance from scientists who accept the old ideas could be relevant history, but D doesn't say understanding that resistance is required to understand the revolutionary movement. It describes how some scientists respond to change. The conclusion concerns a gap in historians' understanding, and that gap still needs to be explained.
- ECorrect
Understanding the revolution requires understanding the preconceptions it rejected. Those are the ideas accepted by normal science. A historian who focuses exclusively on the revolutionary side misses the background needed to understand what the movement was changing. E connects the two kinds of science in exactly the way the conclusion needs.
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