Self-paced
Gardener: Support The design of Japanese gardens should display harmony with nature. ██████ █████ ██████ ███ █████████ ██ ████ ███████ ██████ ████ ██████ ██ ███████████ █████ █████ █████ ██ ██████ ████ ████ ██████ ██ ███████████
Summary
The author concludes that rocks placed in Japanese gardens should vary widely in appearance. Why? Rocks in nature vary widely in appearance, and Japanese gardens should display harmony with nature.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that copying nature helps display harmony with nature. If simply copying nature does not display harmony, the argument makes no sense.
The author also assumes that there aren’t areas of nature with similar rocks. Perhaps nature overall features a variety, but beaches, prairies, or other locations all have the same rocks. In this instance, similar rocks could still imitate nature and thus display harmony.
5.
The gardener's argument depends on ████████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ██████████
a
The selection of █████ ███ █████████ ██ █ ████████ ██████ ██████ ███████ █████ ███ █████ ████████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ ████████ ████████
(A) is far too strong to be necessary. We’re only given a single consideration that rock placement should follow—displaying harmony with nature. We neither know nor care about any other considerations.
b
In the selection ██ █████ ███ ████████ ████████ █████████ ██ ██████ █████ ██ ███████ ███████ ████ ███████
(B) bridges the gap between copying nature and displaying harmony with nature. If (B) were not true, and placing rocks that imitate nature does not help to achieve harmony, then there would be no reason for rock placement to imitate nature.
c
The only criterion ███ █████████ █████ ███ █████████ ██ █ ████████ ██████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ ███████ ████ ███████
(C) is too strong to be necessary. The existence of additional guidelines to follow wouldn’t undermine the need to express harmony with nature, so (C) does not impact our argument.
d
Expressing harmony with ██████ ███ █████ ███████ ███ ███ ████ ██████
We are never told that Japanese gardens are natural, only that they should express harmony with nature. It’s entirely possible to have an unnatural garden that still expresses harmony. As such, it’s not necessary to equate these two concepts.
e
Each component of █ ███████ ████████ ██████ ██ ███████
The conclusion is only concerned with varied rock placement and no other elements. Other elements of nature could be uniform despite rocks being varied, and imitating nature would thus require them to be uniform as well.