#15 - Specific Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[heartofsunshine]

I answered with choice B instead. I took the "clamor of seventeenth-century scientific rhetoric" to mean the opposing view to the Royal Society, which I took to mean the viewpoint that scientists should perform the work themselves. I am confused because I thought the Royal Society believed that the scientists should not perform the work themselves, when it says they should not "demean themselves by mucking about..." but answer choice D goes against this and says the Royal society asserts that "scientists should themselves be responsible.." Because of this I automatically eliminated D. How can I clarify this?

Thank you!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi heartofsunshine,

I think your confusion on this question is coming from a misread of the portion of the first paragraph that says the Royal Society's leaders insisted that scientists "were not to think themselves demeaned by the mucking about with chemicals, furnaces, and pumps." In other words, the scientists were not supposed to think of being "hands-on" (using chemicals, furnaces, and pumps) as something that demeaned them. Rather, they should see it as honorable. Notice the next sentence says (and this is still reporting the leaders' opinions), "the willingness of each of them to become, as Boyle himself said, a mere "drudge" and "under-builder" in the search for God's truth in nature was taken as a sign of their nobility and Christian piety." So the Royal Society's rhetoric was that scientists should see being hands-on as a sign of "nobility and Christian piety," a good thing.

Now it's true there was a distinction between that rhetoric and the way scientists like Boyle behaved (as the author clarifies when describing the culture's more broad contempt for wage-earning employees). But the Royal Society did assert in its rhetoric that scientists should be hands on, and should see this as noble and a sign of virtue.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[TZHUUMD22]

Hello PowerScore,

For this question I chose B instead of D as well, with full knowledge that the Royal Society of London too condemns scientists who are not "hands-on." However, due to the specific locality where the phrase at issue (lines 39-40) occurred, I see B as a better alternative since the forthcoming descriptions (after line 40) are more aligned with the prephrase which will yield answer B and make D seem out of context, since it was mentioned in a farther locality in the passage.

I wonder if my thought process is appropriate in the LSAT context, since I believe LSAT tests the readers' ability to make detailed distinctions in the passages. Please let me know about the correct thought process for this type of questions.

Thank you very much!

T

[Paul Marsh]

Hi TZHUUMD22!

It's true that (B) uses a lot of the same language as the section of the passage around line 40. However, be careful about picking an answer choice just because it has a lot of the same language as the referenced section in the passage. This is a common trap of the test makers. We're not looking for the answer choice that uses the most language from that section of the passage, we're looking for the answer choice that expresses the 17th century rhetoric surrounding science. (B) is incorrect because we are never told that 17th century scientists ridiculed the hoity-toity upper class that didn't want to get its hands dirty; rather, we know that they simply were ok with getting their hands dirty.

You are correct that the support for answer choice (D) comes primarily from the sentence beginning in line 6 of the passage (which outlines how 17th century scientists thought). That is ok. Just because a question stem like this refers us to a specific line in the passage, that doesn't mean the answer to the question will necessarily come from that part of the passage. The part of the passage we're referred to is just a starting point, we also want to look back at any other part of the passage that discussed the same concept.

Hope that helps!

[balikbayan]

why is E wrong? i don't get how D is correct. With E, it specifically talks about the rhetoric and the scientists rhetoric is exactly E. So why is this wrong?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi balikbayan,

It's important when answering a question like this that you prephrase before looking at the answers. It's also important that you have a broader understanding of the overall theme in the passage regarding the "rhetoric" versus how science was actually practiced.

The very first sentence of the passage introduces a contrast or "discrepancy" (line 4) between the way actual scientific experimentation was conducted in the seventeenth century and the rhetoric describing it. This contrast is one of the key ideas in the passage and so when you are identifying the rhetoric, it needs to be in opposition to the how the actual experiments were conducted. The reality, for Boyle and other scientists at the time, is that they used technicians to do a lot of the work (lines 23-31). The rhetoric, by contrast, was that the scientists were supposed to do the work themselves (lines 6-10).

In the specific lines (39-41) referenced in the question, "despite the clamor of seventeenth century rhetoric commending a hands on approach" (my emphasis), this rhetoric is contrasted with the traditional contempt for manual labor that the English upper class had. In other words, the rhetoric is the opposite of contempt for manual labor. This sentence only makes sense if the rhetoric is that the scientists should do the work themselves (i.e. the manual labor).

This is best captured in Answer D.

The problem with Answer E is that it doesn't address the idea that the scientists need to do the work themselves, which is the key idea of the rhetoric and why the rhetoric was different from reality. While Answer E may describe their view on the purpose of science, it doesn't require the scientists to do the research/experiments themselves.

Here's one last point. Notice that question 9 also addresses the scientific rhetoric and the correct Answer (E) also gets at the idea of the rhetoric meaning that the scientist should do the work himself. Even though this question is specifically referring "rhetoric" mentioned in line 6 rather than in lines 39-40 as question 15 does, the way that rhetoric is used doesn't change in the passage. In both places and in both questions, the idea is that the scientists should do the work themselves.