Historians who study European women of the Renaissance try to measure

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja mikemcgarry

Can you explain question 74?


And ques 75 can't we say that historian conform to the view of anthropologist(yet much of the historian's own research reveals that Alessandra acted primarily as a champion of her sons' interests, taking their goals as her own. Thus Alessandra conforms more closely to the anthropologist's notion that personal motivation is embedded in a social context)

1-4 correct, 5th wrong.
Time : 6.5 mins

Posted from my mobile device

Hi everyone,

75. The passage suggests that the historian mentioned in the second paragraph would be most likely to agree with which of the following assertions regarding Alessandra Strozzi?

(D) Alessandra is an example of a Renaissance woman who expressed her individuality through independent action.

How do you know which time frame is the historian in the question above in? If the passage is talking about the historian before the research, then the answer is clearly D. If the passage is talking about the historian after the research, the answer clearly is opposite of D as from his research he would have known that his initial view on Alessandra Strozzi was wrong. In this kind of questions, how can you differentiate whether the passage talking about the historian before or after the research?

Hi Experts,
VeritasKarishma GMATNinja
Can you please explain why 73, B is incorrect?

73. The passage suggests that the historians referred to in line 1 make which of the following assumptions about Renaissance Europe?

(B) That in Renaissance Europe, women were typically allowed to express their individuality
Reason - According to first paragraph, Historians are trying to measure the degree to which individuality can be permitted. So they had to assume that women were at least allowed to express their individuality.
Lets say if they are not even allowed to express their individuality, there is no point to measure the degree to which they were allowed
What's wrong with my reasoning?

(C) That European women of the Renaissance had the possibility of acting independently of the social context in which they lived
How to arrive at C?
Historians never mentioned possibility of acting independently of the social context.

Hi experts, I realize that a few of these questions are already discussed, but I just wanted to clarify a few things that I was still confused about. Thank you in advance for your time and help.

For question 71. (According to the passage, much of the research on Alessandra Strozzi done by the historian mentioned in the second paragraph supports which of the following conclusions?) I ended up choosing E but wanted to clarify the reason(s) as to why Choice B is incorrect.
-->I was stuck between Choice E and B when answering this question. The passage mentions that "the historian assumes that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her son" and "indeed, one could argue that Alessandra did not distinguish her personhood from that of her sons". Choice B is incorrect because the passage does not ever imply that Alessandra "unwillingly" sacrificed her own interests that the historian attributed to her. Also, Choice B is incorrect because it just mentions "interests" whereas Choice E mentions "goals" and "interests" (this second reason I cited was not mentioned in the Official Explanation in the Verbal Book, but it was something that I noticed and wanted to check if that was another reason to rule off this answer choice). Is my understanding correct? Thank you for your help.

For question 73. (The passage suggests that the historians referred to in line 1 make which of the following assumptions about Renaissance Europe?)
--> I would be so appreciative for further clarification as to why Choice B is incorrect because the reasoning used to explain why it is incorrect in the Official Answer from the Verbal Book can technically be used to say that Choice C is also incorrect. The Official Answer says, "even if the historians held a view regarding the scope of what women in Renaissance Europe were typically allowed to do, the passage does not attribute such a view to them." For Choice C, where in the passage does the author confirm that it is at least sometimes possible for women to act "autonomously, unaffected by social context"? All that the passage says is "influenced by Western individualism, these historians define a peculiar form of personhood: an innately bounded unit, autonomous and standing apart from both nature and society." The passage does not say that this "peculiar form of personhood" exists... seems to just be a theory.

For question 74 (In order to bolster her thesis, the historian adopted the anthropological perspective on personhood.) To clarify, Choice B is incorrect because the historian really falls into the first group of historians who try to measure "independence", "options' etc. However, the historians research actually supported what the anthropologists contend. Is my understanding correct?

That pink word, there. That's an important word, and, given the volume of your questions here as well as your (you = woohoo921) generally solid level of basic understanding, I trust that you already have a fundamental understanding of what assumptions are—especially given their position of immense importance, at the center of a whole class of CR problems.

Perhaps, however, the CR Assumption question type has distracted you from the much wider overall scope of assumptions.

CR assumptions problems ask, "Which of these MUST be an assumption?" That's a VERY strong condition. The result is that the assumptions that correctly answer CR assumption problems are all ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY assumptions, which most real-life assumptions are pointedly not.

• Assumptions are, by definition, NOT STATED.

• CR Assumption problems ask for assumptions that are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, by rigorous formally logical standards.
To be absolutely necessary, an assumption must not only hew to the exact precise subset of specific content that the discussion needs, but also MUST be stated in the weakest (most modest; least broad) possible terms (Anything stronger than the minimum, even by only a tiny margin, is no longer ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY because it can be diluted into the even weaker absolute minimum version while remaining fit for purpose.)

The thing is, though, that THE WORD "ASSUMPTION" IN GENERAL does not carry either of the two very exacting mandates that NECESSARY assumptions must fulfill.
In general, assumptions are almost totally open-ended (barring explicit contradictions of given info), because nothing is stopping anybody from importing 17 different weird ideas into innocuous conversations.

Thus,
• NECESSARY assumptions—the type that constitute the goal in CR assumption problems—are only a tiny tiny fraction of all assumptions.
Generally, "assumption" means "a thing that someone just made up, inserted herself/himself into the dialogue/discussion, and ran with it".
Assumptions limned by random people may or may not be true. But, an author who writes about some other person's assumptions does not own them, and is not stating them, AT ALL—nor can you represent assumptions in general as true (unless they are NECESSARY assumptions).

With these ideas reinforced in your mind—and, if you were mistakenly thinking that ALL 'assumptions' must be like CR assumption answers in order to get that label, with that false equivalence now eradicated—you should be able to see that none of the speculative steps in your paragraph about #73 are worth touching.

• Historian X assumed that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her son.

• At no point is there any insinuation that the author endorses this idea.

• In fact, it's almost certainIt's much more likely that the author does NOT endorse this idea. This is like other normal uses of such words. ≥99% of attributions specifically to others—"Person X said..." "You think that..." "According to person Y"—by ≥99% of real life people identify ideas with which the speaker DOES NOT agree, and that the speaker will probably try to rebut/counterargue as soon as they've fobbed those ideas off as Someone Else's Words.

• There's never any indication that the historian was right, either.


And even if you lost out on all of these points (which would happen if you mistakenly imported the idea of a NECESSARY assumption), you can still reject B because it explicitly contradicts E. If E is true, then her sons' priorities are hers as well, and so nobody had to sacrifice anything.

Hi everyone.
I'm having the same question as DarkAveneger
Can anyone please help to explain?
Thank you!

Sajjad1994
can you pls explain question 72 and 74?

For Question #74 Follow the link below.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/historians-w ... l#p2534597