PrepTest 105, Section 4, Question 1
Shortly after Isaac Newton circulated some of his(87 more words not shown)
The statements in the passage,(10 more words not shown)
- ANewton did not(18 more words not shown)
- BNewton did not(13 more words not shown)
- CNewton did not(16 more words not shown)
- DNewton intended to(20 more words not shown)
- ENewton was not(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Building on someone else's work isn't necessarily stealing it. An online teacher, for example, can offer useful instruction while relying on microphones, software, and the internet that other people developed. The teacher's contribution and that dependence can both be real. So Hooke's claim that Newton used his work doesn't, by itself, settle how to understand Newton's comment.
“Standing on the shoulders of giants” suggests that earlier work helped Newton see further. But whose work did he mean? A modern reader might hear an acknowledgment of Hooke and Newton's other contemporaries. The passage gives two reasons to doubt that reading: conciliatory acknowledgments were uncharacteristic of Newton, and “giants” in his day typically referred to the ancient Greeks.
What we’re looking for
That makes an acknowledgment of Hooke less likely than the modern reader might think. Neither “uncharacteristic” nor “typically” is an absolute rule, so we shouldn't turn this into certainty about every acknowledgment Newton ever made. For the most-strongly-supported question, my prediction concerns this comment: it probably wasn't intended to give Hooke the credit that reading suggests.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This is the interpretation the passage supports. The comment might sound like an acknowledgment that Newton largely derived his theories from Hooke, but Newton's usual behavior and the historical use of “giants” both count against that reading. A stays focused on the intended meaning of the quoted remark.
- B
Whether Newton took credit for advances Hooke made is a different question from whether this comment acknowledged Hooke. We aren't given enough information to resolve the credit dispute. Failing to acknowledge someone in a particular remark doesn't prove either that one took that person's credit or that one never did.
- C
The passage doesn't tell us what Newton believed about where Hooke's theories came from. The ancient Greeks enter the discussion as the likely reference of Newton's word “giants.” That doesn't establish a separate belief about Hooke's intellectual debts.
- D
Replacing Hooke with other contemporary scientists doesn't solve the problem. The passage contrasts the ancient Greeks with contemporary scientists as a group. Its evidence therefore doesn't support an intended acknowledgment of different contemporaries instead.
- E
Newton could have known Hooke's work without referring to it in this comment. Familiarity and acknowledgment are different. The passage gives reasons to interpret the remark a certain way, not reasons to conclude that Newton was unfamiliar with his colleague's theories.
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