PrepTest 118, Section 3, Question 18
The tendency toward overspecialization in the study of(50 more words not shown)
Of the following, which one(13 more words not shown)
- ATo understand completely(20 more words not shown)
- BTo understand fully(18 more words not shown)
- CTo appreciate fully(14 more words not shown)
- DTo understand properly(19 more words not shown)
- ETo understand completely(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Don't just study the finished product. Study what influenced it.
The concern here is that specialists can become so focused on one artistic period that they miss what it borrowed from earlier work. I can see how that would limit their understanding. If Arabic porcelain influenced Spanish artisans, studying only Spanish porcelain could leave part of the story unexplained.
What we’re looking for
There is a practical question about how much anyone can master. We only have so much time. But we're not being asked whether every scholar should become an expert in everything. We're looking for another application of this principle: understanding something properly requires understanding a significant influence on it. The direction matters. Look for the thing being explained and the earlier source that helped shape it.
Working the answers
- A
Follow the direction carefully. The research trends influence society's views, but A says understanding the trends requires understanding their effects on those views. Our principle goes the other way: to understand the thing influenced, study the source of the influence. An answer about how research shapes society would fit if it required understanding the research in order to understand society's resulting views.
- B
Earlier isn't enough. These earlier events are similar to the later ones, but we aren't told that they influenced them. Two events could resemble one another without one helping shape the other. The porcelain example depends on influence, not simply an earlier example of the same sort of thing.
- C
Sharing ancestry makes the languages more like relatives with a common source. It doesn't establish that the other languages influenced French. We would want to study an actual source of French's development, not merely another language that came from a related background. C gives us shared origins instead of the required influence relationship.
- D
Knowing something about the wider academic community isn't necessarily knowing what influenced the particular discipline. Those other practices could be unrelated to its development. D recommends broad acquaintance without identifying the source-and-result relationship the principle requires.
- ECorrect
Aristotle's philosophy is the thing we want to understand, corresponding to Spanish porcelain. Plato's philosophy is the influential earlier work: Plato is described as Aristotle's intellectual mentor, just as Arabic porcelain influenced the Spanish artisans.
The recommendation is to study the intellectual source to understand what it helped shape. That preserves both the influence and its direction. We don't need prior knowledge of either philosopher; the mentor relationship supplies the relevant connection.
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