PT1.S3.Q03 - early in this century, alfred wegener

Seriousbird

This is a principle question.

I'm actually completely lost on this one.

I thought the principle to be extracted from the stimulus was somewhere along the lines of, in order to gain acceptance for a theory, there needs to be some evidence to support the ideas expounded in the theory.

The reason I thought this was because even though scientists did not find such a force as evidence, new instruments allowed continental movement to be confirmed by observation which I thought acted as evidence.

A) No idea what to make of this or do with this
Doesn't do anything to the argument. In this particular theory science has not identified the force, so this answer choice is irrelevant.
C) This I think could be considered irrelevant, this changes the scope of the argument. Measuring instruments appear to make theories harder to work out, what does that have to do with the stimulus? Absolutely nothing.
D) Science is concerned with mass behavior, ok, but what does mass behavior have to do with a force that can make the continents move? Nothing. I think this is irrelevant.
E) This is the correct answer. I can see how this could be correct because there is no explanation for the posited theory, yet the evidence is there/detected.

I guess if someone could explain why A is wrong and why E is correct that would be great. I was really confused with this question.

JustDoIt

Hello! The argument is saying that Wegner's theory was not accepted in the past because there was no proof of it. However, now that we have ability to see Wegner's theory actually happening, we accept that theory.

A. is wrong because is the argument really implying that science aspires to explain everything in terms of one single, harmonious theory? No it isn't. Who cares if there is more than one theory. This is not relevant and, more importantly, this principle is not underlying the stimulus.

E. is correct. Think about its bare essentials in terms of conditionality. If we discover the events of a theory, then that theory should be accepted. This is basically what the argument is saying. Even more specifically, if you break up the last sentence of the stimulus, it is actually saying: We accept Wegner's theory. Why? Because we have the instruments that have detected Wegner's predictions. E. is just stating this in much more general terms.

Hope this helps!