zoezhuyan wrote:
dear
AndrewN,
would you please help Q5, I am not sure how to choose between A and B.
after reading this passage, I though the passage says some people wanted to switch from historical explanation to cause through experiment process, but later they found it is impossible to throw historical explanation away. although historical explanation is uncompleted, they found solutions.
I think investigation here means examination the use of historical explanation, and as a result, it is impossible to throw historical explanation out. that's what investigation points out.
but B also seems good.
I need your help.
thanks in advance
Hello,
zoezhuyan. I agree with the post above by
mSKR. When it comes to any Verbal task, you want to stop searching for correct answers and start looking for those that are easier to argue against. Use that process of elimination against each question. Keep in mind that specificity often works against answer choices in broader RC questions (basically those that do not adopt an according-to-the-passage framework). When I look at the question at hand, it is broader in scope:
Quote:
The passage would be most likely to appear in which of the following?
Since you asked about (A) and (B) in particular, how about we look at them?
Quote:
A. An essay investigating the methodology used by historians of human events
B. A book outlining the history of biology in the nineteenth century
Looking at (A),
investigating the methodology is already suspect before we reach the latter part. I would expect such an investigation to provide a step-by-step account of what
biologists of the nineteenth century had done to explore their scientific interests. The passage seems to want to explain its topic instead. See, for instance, the first line of the second paragraph:
Quote:
Nineteenth-century biologists found a historical
explanation of organic function attractive partly
because their observation of the formation of a
new cell from a preexisting cell seemed to confirm
a historical explanation of cell generation.
We, the readers, are being
told why the biologists
found a historical explanation of organic function attractive, and the sentences that follow provide detail to that end. We are not privy to seeing how the biologists set up and carried out their experiments, something that I feel would be more in keeping with (A).
The latter part of (A) is just as problematic. The mention of
historians of human events does not encapsulate the content of the passage, but latches onto a sentence that is mentioned at the end of the first paragraph and, to be honest, is
too broad in scope. That is, the passage is not concerned with
human events in general, but from start to finish focuses on
historical explanation in nineteenth-century biology (lines 4, 10, 11, 14-15, 19, 28-29, 33, and 49). So, we now have two reasons to doubt (A).
I really like the way
mSKR parsed (B) to look for weaknesses but could not turn up any. The passage is indeed
outlining the history of biology in the nineteenth century. An
outline does not have to an in-depth or exhaustive look at something, and the details on offer—
history +
biology +
nineteenth century—all add up to form a composite that is difficult to argue against. For this reason and those above, (B) is a superior answer to (A).
I hope that helps with your queries.
- Andrew
_________________
I am no longer contributing to GMAT Club. Please request an active Expert or a peer review if you have questions.