V04-41

Official Solution:

Whereas pure science is mainly concerned with the discovery of new truths and makes few, if any, attempts to discern the best options between their potential uses, applied science involves the application of existing truths to concrete problems.

A. best options between their potential uses
B. best options between its potential uses
C. best of the options among their potential uses
D. best options among its potential uses
E. best options among their potential uses


A. "Among" is used to refer to a group / collection, whereas "between" is used to refer to distinct objects. Examples:

B. “Between” is used incorrectly as explained in option A above. Singular pronoun “its” wrongly refers to the plural antecedent “truths”. The implied meaning is that each truth discovered has multiple uses, not that discovery (as a whole of all the truths) has multiple uses - few attempts are made to discern the best option among the uses of each truth (or in plural “best options among the uses of the truths”). Thus the pronoun should be "their" referring to "truths".

C. The word “of” is wordy and unnecessary. Multiple scientific truths are discovered - each of them has one best option (among many potential uses). Thus many truths must have many best options among many potential sets of uses - it does not make sense to say that all these truths have only one best option (i.e. all of them have that same use). Hence option C is incorrect.

D. The pronoun “its” is wrong as explained in option B above.

E. CORRECT. Eliminates all the errors described above. “Among” is correctly used to refer to a group. Plural pronoun “their” is correctly used to refer to plural antecedent “truths”.


Answer: E