PrepTest 119, Section 2, Question 14
Roger Bacon, the thirteenth-century scientist, is said to(69 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(5 more words not shown)
- Apresumes, without providing(7 more words not shown)
- Battacks Bacon's uncritical(4 more words not shown)
- Cuses Bacon's remarks(8 more words not shown)
- Dignores the fact(9 more words not shown)
- Ecriticizes Bacon's character(7 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A hypocrite can still make a real discovery.
Bacon tells students not to accept an authority's opinion without thinking, then sometimes appeals to authority when it helps his own argument. I can understand criticizing that inconsistency. But what does it tell us about his work on optics? Were those findings tested? Were the observations accurate? The passage hasn't examined them.
Imagine someone who knows a subject well but gets tired of explaining and says, “Trust me; I work on this all day.” That shortcut doesn't give the listener a proper reason to believe the claim. It also doesn't establish that the claim is false. A person can reason lazily on one occasion and still do valuable work elsewhere.
What we’re looking for
The conclusion discards Bacon's scientific work because of the mismatch between his advice and behavior. That's the flaw I'd expect the answer to describe: criticism of the person is being used to discredit the findings. Even granting the accusation of hypocrisy, we still need to evaluate the science.
Working the answers
- A
The argument doesn't need to assume that authority opinions are often wrong. Its objection is that Bacon sometimes relies on an approach he warns students against. That inconsistency could exist even if the authorities he cited happened to be right. The unsupported move is from his behavior to rejecting his findings.
- B
Attacking a genuinely uncritical reliance on authority wouldn't by itself be a flaw. We can reasonably ask for evidence instead of accepting someone's title or reputation. Here the problem is what the author does next: uses the criticism of Bacon to dismiss his work on optics without showing what is wrong with the findings.
- C
A person's stated views can be evidence of that person's opinions. Quoting what Bacon taught his students is a reasonable way to show what he advocated. That isn't what makes the inference to disregarding his scientific work fail.
- D
Perhaps some thirteenth-century science would fail modern scrutiny. But that would call for examining the science, which this argument doesn't do. The possibility of outdated findings doesn't justify rejecting Bacon's work on the stated basis of his inconsistent behavior.
- ECorrect
The author attacks Bacon's character by portraying him as someone who fails to practice what he teaches, then uses that attack to question his scientific findings. Those are different matters. Hypocrisy might make us want to scrutinize his work, but it doesn't establish that the work should generally be disregarded. We need evidence about the findings themselves.
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