#20 - Concept Reference, Must Be True

[lsatquestions]

Hi, I correctly selected E for this question but had A as a contender. I eliminated the other choices as they were irrelevant or not mentioned in the passage.

I selected E because I found mentions of it directly in the passage: "the phenomena of science are supposed to be repeatable, arising from universal laws, rather than historically contingent." Is the repeatable phenomena preferable because of the certainty of the outcome?

Also, why is A incorrect? Is biological law = nondeterminist biology?

[katehos]

Hi lsatquestions!

Great analysis of answer choice (E)! You're correct to use that sentence from the text to support the idea that the nature of the phenomena in physics is a strong reason why many philosophers prefer physics.

Regarding answer choice (A), the first thing to point out is biological law does not necessarily equate to nondeterminist biology. It seems from the text that biological determinists are trying to seek biological laws (lines 43-45), while nondeterminists would deny this (line 50). Additionally, the text does not say that biological laws are more difficult to discover than physical ones. In order to do this, the author would have to compare the relative level of difficulty of the two, which is not done in the text. Since there is no mention of whether or not biological laws are actually more difficult to discover than physical ones, (A) cannot be the correct answer!

I hope this helps
Kate