Q23

[daytimeowl17]

Hi! I could easily see how A is supported in the first two paragraphs, but I struggled with eliminating C.

Line 43-48 say organicists 'overlooked' the fact that the proponents of analytic method first determined the laws applicable to the whole system before analyzing the parts, and since organists 'failed to recognize' this, they offered no valid objection. I could infer from this that organicists mistakenly accused the analytic method of ignoring the laws applicable to the system as a whole, which is what (C) is saying. Is (C) incorrect, cuz (A) is more of a chief objection, which I see why, or is that line 43-48 somehow fail to support (C)? If so, what did I miss? I'd appreciate any help.

[ohthatpatrick]

Before addressing your support for (C), let's first and foremost reorganize your approach to an "according to the passage" problem:

using the keywords in the question stem, locate the sentence(s) in the passage that this question is testing. Re-read that sentence or two. Find the closest answer.

Here I would be looking for "what was the organicists' chief objection to the analytic method?"

This is where our Passage Map come in handy.

P1: intro to Analytic and Organisism

P2: Discussion of Organisism

P3: Author's specific problem with Organisism (theory of internal relations)

P4: Author's general problem with Organisism

P5: Author's explanation of how Organisists miscontrue Analytic

Since paragraphs 3-5 are all in the author's voice, I wouldn't be looking there for a question that says "what did the Organisists say".

Since paragraph 2 is just about Organisism, I wouldn't be looking there for a question that says "what did the O's say about Analytic?"

So our answer must be in paragraph 1. Indeed, we see in line 4-6, "critics of [analytic method] claimed that when a system's parts are isolated its complexity tends to be lost". THIS was the springboard for founding organisism.

So I go to the answers looking for the closest paraphrase of "when a system's parts are isolated its complexity tends to be lost".

(A), of course, is just a repetition of that using paraphrases. "oversimplified" = "complexity is lost". "isolating their components" = "parts are isolated".

You made an admirable case for (C), but it would be all inferential, not explicitly supported (not "according to the passage").

We can't go from "he overlooked X" or " he failed to recognize X" to "his primary objection was that X is false".

Had we been asked an "inferred/implies/suggests" question about this, we could support an answer that said "organisists may have assumed that analytic scientists did not initially consider the laws of the system as a whole".

But that's a far cry from CITING it as organisists' chief objection.

I love "according to the passage" questions because it's the one time when you can pretty much KNOW you have the right answer because you found the answer in the passage. There's no real need to disprove the other answers. They're wrong because they're not right! (kinda like Sufficient Assumption)

That's not to say we don't need to watch out for language traps and be wary of distorted paraphrases. But if (A) locks in with the sentence these keywords are testing, we're done.

[renata.gomez]

Hi,

Can someone please go into why B is wrong? I was between A and B but thought B was correct because in the first paragraph, they're criticising the analytic method by saying that the whole can't necessarily be divided into parts because then it loses some of it's complexity. I thought B gets at this by saying that they're assuming that it can be divided..

Would it be because of the use of "system" instead of "complex systems"?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you!