PT144.S1.P4.Q23 > Analytics

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Passage A.

Intro to Popper · Power of negative evidence

A single black swan disproves that all swans are white

Asymmetry · Between positive and negative evidence

Positive evidence has no value

Requirements of Science · Search for negative evidence; making falsifiable predictions

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Critique of Popper · Negative evidence is not as powerful as he believes

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Premise · Theories have to work together to entail predictions

So a failed prediction means some theory is false, but it's unclear which one.

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Prediction · Orbit of Uranus

Multiple theories working together to entail the predictions. This can be framed as an application of Passage A.

Prediction · Failed

At least one of the theories is wrong.

Passage Style

23.

In saying that Popper gives █ ███████ ████ ███████████ ████████████ ██████ ████████ ██ ███████ ███ ███ ██████ ██ ███████ █ █████ ██ ███████ ████ ██████

Question Type

Meaning in context (of word, phrase, or idea)

Structure

We only need to consider passage A for this question. “Hyperbolic” means exaggerated. But if we didn’t know this, we could get it from context. Popper thought that positive evidence “has no value” and that one piece of negative context is all it takes to disprove a theory. So he was taking the fact that positive and negative evidence have unequal weight to extremes, according to author A.

extends the idea ██ █████ ██ █████ ██ ████ ███ █████

Passage A is all about how powerful negative evidence is for science, and the author suggests that Popper exaggerates that power. Throughout the passage, the domain of discussion is science in general. The author never suggests that Popper takes the power of negative evidence too far by extending the idea to other situations (like, say, to law or to basketball). Rather, the author argues Popper exaggerates how powerful negative evidence is for science.

11%

underestimates the significance ██ ███ ████

This is the opposite of what Popper does, according to author A. Popper overestimates how powerful negative evidence is.

commits a logical ███████ ██ █████████ █████ ███ ████

The author doesn’t suggest any logical fallacy or flaw. She simply says Popper takes the idea that negative evidence is more powerful than positive evidence and runs with that idea too far, exaggerating how powerful negative evidence really is.

draws too radical █ ██████████ ████ ███ ████

When author A says that popper gives the unequal weight between positive and negative evidence “hyperbolic application,” she explains that Popper thought positive evidence “has no value” and one piece of negative context is all it takes to disprove a theory. So she’s saying Popper was taking things to extremes and drawing too radical a conclusion from the fact that negative evidence can be more powerful than positive evidence.

71%

exaggerates the idea's █████████ ██ █ ██████████ ██████

Author A doesn’t refer to any particular theories in the first place. Her discussion is entirely generalized: she says Popper exaggerates the importance of negative evidence to science as a whole.

13%

PrepTest 144 - Section 1 - Passage 4 - Question 23

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