AnirudhaS wrote:
Please help to eliminate choice B.
Pankaj1Agarwal wrote:
how to eliminate B?
shubham2312 wrote:
someone kindly explain why B cant be the answer of this question.
Although i was able to answer the question correctly but i feel B is also correct because we can not challenge what is written in the documents
Hello, everyone. I see several questions about (B), so I thought I would offer my thoughts on how to eliminate it. Perhaps my recollection of an art history class helped me out on this one. Specifically, I recall that Akhenaten came along and told everyone to abandon the old gods, the ones they had been worshipping for generations, and to worship the new god (a sun god, I believe), Aten, instead, who, naturally, was the divine father of Akhenaten. He changed the art of the time, which before had been broken down in grid-like fashion to fit a specific proportion for each specific angle (profile or directly facing the viewer); instead, he looked rather human. He was even portrayed as having a belly and playing with his children. (See
this image.) The Egyptians in the court were not happy with all these radical changes, but what could they do? Akhenaten was the pharaoh. To make a long story short, Akhenaten was killed before too long, and so hated were his changes that all public images of him were ordered to be defaced, literally chiseled down to make the likeness of the man unrecognizable. (Obviously, some images survived.) In short, he was
not a popular ruler.
How does all this help us with (B)? Look at it again, in light of the question, which asks us to spot
a questionable technique used in the argument:
Quote:
(B) Rely on evidence that in principle would be impossible to challenge
As was the case in real life, it makes perfect sense that
his palace guards would have shown
fierce loyalty to their pharaoh
during his reign. It was only afterward that they quite boldly disrespected him. So how would the evidence, in principle,
be impossible to challenge? It is rather easy to suggest that the personal guards of just about any high ruler (particularly an off-with-his-head type) had a personal agenda in praising that ruler in
reports written from that sliver of time. The evidence is therefore suspect, not so different from Galileo recanting his heliocentric theory under threats of torture. Did Galileo mean it? Of course not. If someone pointed to the documented words of Galileo recanting that theory, would those words be
impossible to challenge? I leave you with that thought. (C) is a much better answer.
Pardon the historical detour, but I enjoyed the Egyptian unit in that art history course. Do I think this question would appear on the GMAT™? No, but it makes a fine LSAT question, and the same type of logic does appear from time to time in
boldface questions.
I hope that helps. Good luck with your studies.
- Andrew
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