PrepTest 102, Section 3, Question 17
People cannot devote themselves to the study of(71 more words not shown)
The argument is structured to(5 more words not shown)
- Awhenever a society(16 more words not shown)
- Bplants cannot be(14 more words not shown)
- Cagriculture first began(12 more words not shown)
- Dearly agricultural societies(11 more words not shown)
- Eearly societies could(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
If all your time goes into finding food and shelter, when are you supposed to study how plants grow? The passage says that studying natural processes requires leisure, and leisure requires plentiful resources.
Having the resources does not guarantee that people will study anything. They might spend their free time relaxing. Keep the direction straight: study requires leisure, but leisure does not require study.
Now apply that to the societies that first cultivated crops. According to the passage, they had to discover how the plants reproduced and matured before they domesticated them. Those discoveries came from active study.
So those societies must have had time to study. And that means they must have had plentiful resources at that earlier point.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to complete the argument. Our prediction is that the societies had plentiful resources sometime before agriculture began. That does not settle whether resources were still plentiful when they actually started cultivating crops. The necessary study could have happened earlier.
Working the answers
- A
This is the direction we were worried about. Plentiful resources give people the leisure needed for study; they do not make people use their leisure that way. A society could have abundant resources and spend its free time on other things. A turns an opportunity to study into a guarantee that someone does.
- B
The passage says the early societies made discoveries about plant reproduction and growth. It does not say that every person who cultivates a plant needs theoretical knowledge of those principles. Someone might follow instructions developed by others without understanding the theory behind them. B turns a claim about the discoveries preceding early agriculture into a broader requirement for anyone who grows plants.
- CCorrect
Work backward from agriculture. The early agricultural societies first made discoveries through active study. Study required leisure, and leisure required plentiful resources. Therefore, those societies had plentiful resources at some time in their history.
“At some time” matters. We are establishing an earlier period that made the discoveries possible. We are not proving that a later drought could not have prompted people to begin cultivating crops.
- D
We have no comparison between the scientific knowledge of agricultural and nonagricultural societies. A nonagricultural society might have studied other natural processes extensively. Knowing that the agricultural societies made these particular discoveries does not establish that they knew more about natural science overall.
- E
The passage attributes the discoveries to active study. It does not establish an accidental route to the same knowledge. E suggests an alternative explanation for the discoveries instead of following the given chain from study to leisure to plentiful resources.
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