PrepTest 140, Section 2, Question 20
Recent medical and anthropological data show that prohibitions(46 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- AThe origin of(21 more words not shown)
- BThe social, economic,(15 more words not shown)
- CThe social importance(17 more words not shown)
- DThe original purpose(15 more words not shown)
- EThe people who(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
You don't need a modern research paper to notice that people get sick after eating a particular plant. An ancient community might observe that pattern and prohibit the food without understanding the process the way today's researchers do.
That's my first objection. The modern data show that food prohibitions served useful functions, but the author says those data cannot explain where the rules came from because the original rule-makers didn't have the same information. Why couldn't their observations have led them toward a rule whose benefits modern data help explain?
What we’re looking for
The assumption question asks what this argument depends on. Initially, I'd look for an assumption about needing the modern data to understand the prohibition's origin. But keep the author's reason in focus: what the original adopters knew is being used to limit what can explain the rule's beginning.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The author assumes that explaining a prohibition's origin requires referring to the understanding of the people who adopted and enforced it. Otherwise, why would their lack of modern data rule those data out as an explanation? Researchers might explain how a practice arose through influences its creators didn't understand.
A goes a step earlier than our initial objection about informal observation. It establishes that the original rule-makers' understanding has to constrain an explanation of the origin at all. Without that requirement, the author's premise about what they knew wouldn't justify the conclusion.
- B
The food prohibitions don't have to contradict one another. The argument concerns whether modern evidence about their functions can explain their origins. That question arises whether the rules fit together perfectly or conflict.
- C
Social importance and nutritional value could be connected. The author doesn't need to separate them to argue that the original adopters' lack of modern information limits an explanation. C introduces a relationship the argument never relies on.
- D
A community could remember a prohibition's original purpose for many generations, and the author's claim about lacking modern data would remain the same. Forgetting the purpose later isn't required by this reasoning about what the first adopters understood.
- E
A nontechnical understanding of medical benefits is possible; our plant example illustrates that possibility. But the argument doesn't require the original adopters generally to have such an understanding. Their understanding could instead have concerned social or economic functions. A states the required restriction on explanations without assuming this particular kind of knowledge.
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