#9 - A scientific theory is a good theory if it satisfies

[blade21cn]

Can anyone explain why (B) is the credited answer choice? It states "Observation of physical phenomena was not a major concern in Aristotle's cosmological theory." I think it correlates with the first requirement for good theory: "Accurately describe a large class of observations in terms of ..." The stimulus told us that A's theory "satisfied the first requirement." So it is not a major concern. Why that is not supported?

Also, why is (D) supported? Admin's explanation defined "many" as "a large number of." But logically speaking, "many" is just "some (1 to 100%)"; grammatically speaking, "many" means "more than one" or "two or above." What is the exact distinction between "a few" and "many"? Can we put a number as a cutoff? Are they opposite of each other? In addition, grammatically speaking, I think "a few" is positive and "few" is negative. For example, "a few of the students stayed in the classroom" could mean several; "few of the students stayed in the classroom" could mean "virtually none of." Lastly, I tend to think "a large number" is a "some" statement as well. How do we negotiate through this loosey-gooseyly defined number describers? Thanks in advance!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi blade,

Let's start with answer choice (B). We are looking for the one answer choice that does not have to be true. For this answer choice, we don't know if Aristotle's theory was concerned with observation of physical phenomena. We know that it contained a model with few elements, but we don't know if he based it on the observation of physical phenomena. Our stimulus doesn't tell us, and we aren't sure if it's true or not. Therefore, it's the correct answer for a MBT except question.

The term "many" is a term that's dependent on context. For example, if I told you I have many cars, that would probably be somewhere between 4 and 10 cars. If I told you my company has many employees, you would be surprised to see a number as small as 4 or even 10. You'd expect a much larger number. It's contextual. In answer choice (D), we would expect many to be a bigger number than "only a few." That's all we need to get here. We don't need to get into exact numbers. We just need to know that a few is different than many.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[ridolph.lauren]

Hello,

I am curious as to why answer A is considered true when it only includes "predictions must be made about future observations," leaving out the other requirement of "describes a large class of observations in terms of a model that is simple......etc.." Being that this condition requires both necessary conditions and must be diagrammed using the word "and" initially for those necessary conditions.

Thanks...

Lauren

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi ridolph,

The conditional relationship is as follows

good theory few elements AND predictive.

That means once something is a good theory, you know both of the necessary conditions are met. Answer choice (A) is just a restatement of the conditional--if it's a good theory, it must be predictive.

It seems like you are getting sufficient and necessary as concepts confused. If something is necessary, like predictive is here, it doesn't mean that it's sufficient. It's not telling you all the things required for a good theory. It's just telling you one thing that's required.

Let's look at a more familiar example.

In order to vote, you must be over 18 and register to vote.

Vote over 18 AND registered

It must be true that in order to vote, you have to be over 18. You also must be registered, but that doesn't mean that the over 18 element is not a requirement. Just like our conditional in the stimulus, each one of the necessary conditions is absolutely required. A MBT answer does not have to have everything that must be true---it just needs to have something that must be true.

Hope that helps!