- Mon May 22, 2023 2:35 pm
#101898
Hi sadonna,
The stimulus in this question presents us with a general rule or trend that significant intellectual advances generally occur in cities or countries that have a stable political system but also gives us an exception to that general rule in that Plato and Aristotle made major intellectual advances in ancient Athens even though ancient Athens had great political instability.
The question is asking for an additional (new) piece of information that helps explain why Plato and Aristotle were able to make these significant intellectual advances in conditions that usually seem to prevent them from occurring. In other words, what was different about ancient Athens than the other unstable political environments where significant intellectual advances did not occur?
Answer C does help reconcile the counterexample by first giving a possible reason that significant intellectual advances usually do not occur in unstable political environments (because financial support, for example, by the government, is typically unavailable in these environments) and then showing how ancient Athens was different because financial support for intellectual endeavors was directly given by the wealthy citizens, which wouldn't necessarily be affected by political instability.
You definitely shouldn't rule out Answer C because it talks about financial support. In Resolve the Paradox questions such as this one, not only is it okay for the right answer to bring in "new" information, it basically has to bring in new information to shed light on the situation in the stimulus.
Here, the amount of financial support for intellectual endeavors would be very relevant to the amount of intellectual activity occurring and thereby the amount of intellectual advances. A society that funds higher education and scientific research, for example, would likely have more intellectual breakthroughs than a society that doesn't.
