Our society overestimates the contributions of science to the quest fo

D is the right answer.


Breakdown of Argument
Conclusion: Our society overestimates the contributions of science to the quest for knowledge. It is the height of gullibility or presumption to invest special credence in the current scientific fashion.
Premise: Independent of whether great strides have been made in the ability to predict natural events, knowledge at any deeper level, knowledge of things we cannot experience directly, is as illusory as ever. Such knowledge is illusory because incompatible theories may always be postulated to explain observations. How can we “know” which one is correct?
Premise: Further observations may narrow the possibilities, but there are always alternatives, at least in principle. Who is to say that today’s theories will fare any better than those which, though once accepted, were replaced by wholly different conceptions of nature?

Clearly the conclusion that can be drawn from the argument is that our society overestimates the contribution of science to the quest for knowledge and that it is the height of gullibility or presumption to invest special credence in the current scientific fashion. Looking at the answer choices, D states that the ability of science to produce knowledge is overrated, and this is the correct answer as it is a variation of the conclusion of the argument as stated above.

The argument did not contrast science with any other approach in terms of which approach is less valuable in the production of knowledge. A is thus incorrect.

This is out of scope as the passage above does not talk about whether differences among scientific theories result in genuine progress. B is incorrect.

Clearly, this is opposed to the conclusion of the argument above. The author's main point is that our society overestimates the contributions of science to the quest for knowledge. Hence C is incorrect.

This is the correct answer.

The argument does not state that accepted scientific theories are probably self-contradictory. The argument talks about the possibility of postulating incompatible alternative theories to explain scientific observations. This cannot be construed to mean that currently accepted scientific theories are probably self-contradictory. E is incorrect.