PT5.S1.Q16 - The seventeenth-century physicist Sir Isaac

STT_340STT_340 Member
edited February 2019 in Logical Reasoning 89 karma

I struggled between A and B, why is A wrong? and why is B right?

I would think A to be wrong because it focuses the blame on historians, which came from nowhere because the stimulus didn't mention; or even "some great scientists" we don't know about any scientist but Newton

I would think B is also wrong because it says "review by other scientists": i guess I thought other scientist reviewing never came up but when i think more, I guess it can reasonably assumed that if it is published, it will be reviewed by other scientists which is what would cause the advancement of chemistry but an assumption no less

help

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Comments

  • PearlyGoGoPearlyGoGo Alum Member
    171 karma

    Let me try to break down the argument. This is a SA question, the argument concludes that eighteenth century chemistry would have been more advanced than it actually was if seventeenth century alchemists would have published the results of their experiments. Why? we are told that Newton (as an example) had conducted some unsuccessful experiments.
    In SA question, we are trying to bridge up a gap between premise and conclusion, and (B) did a good job by building up a bridge between publishing the experiments (whether successful or not) and advances in science.
    As regards to your question, I think we can totally assume that if it is available for review, then it is already published.
    As for (A), I think your reasoning is correct. We are trying to link up the premise and the conclusion, and the premise part in this AC is just totally wrong, where did the "reluctance of historians to acknowledge the failures of ..." even coming from.

  • BlindReviewerBlindReviewer Alum Member
    855 karma

    I think the underlying logical confusion you're making for A is kind of the A -> B therefore B -> A invalid argument form. I used to get frustrated when JY would repeat that this is the "oldest trick in the book" because I kept falling for it, but here it's kind of subtle.

    The conclusion we're trying to draw is:

    People knowing about Newton's alchemy stuff -> Chemistry progress would be more advanced

    Answer choice A is basically, in conditional form:

    Reluctance of historians to to acknowledge the failures of great scientists -> Scientific progress is slowed down

    From this logical statement, there's no way we can push out the conclusion that "scientific progress is accelerated" to match what we want to say about chemistry. If you take the contrapositive, you get:

    Scientific progress is accelerated -> Historians are eager to acknowledge the failures of great scientists

    As a huge, huge disclaimer, answer choice A isn't technically a conditional statement, and also the analogy I'm trying to draw here is full of assumptions (for example, that slowing is the opposite of accelerating, or that reluctance is the opposite of being eager).

    Furthermore, even aside from this logical distinction, the conclusion is if ALCHEMISTS PUBLISHED their findings... - answer choice A says something about historians recognizing the failures of scientists. These are not at all equivalent. I also think "some great scientists" is too weak for a SA argument, since we don't know how many "some" entails.

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