Q25

[andrewgong01]

I was down between A and B that really confused me for some reason because ussually purpose questions are ones I find straight forward:


A) I chose this one on review. My reasoning for A is that the author in the next sentence goes on to talk about how this longing leaves us in state of discomfort that could lead us to finally see history as a contingency and it seemed like the author was somewhat hopeful that this could be a good thing and that it will cause us to stop wanting to think of history as something that is deterministic. On a side note by contingency, do we just mean viewing history more flexibly and not as a strict "mathematical" sequence of event? However, this was not the credited response..

B) I chose this on the actual test and I think I chose this on the actual test because I did not think deeper into the question and chose it because I recall that section was about nostalgia and why we like the past.




Other Choices
C) Scope, this section had nothing to do with losing comfort in grand theories over time. If anything this seems to be the opposite of what nostalgia is trying to get at
D) This goes against the author stance's because the author is in favor and a support of using narrative techniques for unrepeatable details of human events; after all the author's prescription in the passage was for more focus on contingency
E) This goes against the section because we are talking about nostalgia for the past (grand theories) so it is unlikely the purpose of bringing up this is to talk about the fact that this interest will die down in the future.

[ohthatpatrick]

Purpose of a Detail questions usually test the framing idea that comes right BEFORE the detail. But sometimes it tests the gist of the sentence or the framing idea that comes next.

When Q25 asks why the author said ‘cognitive satisfaction’, I immediately thought about our answer for Q23 as my prephrase: to sympathize with why people crave an orderly system for understanding the world, such as that provided by a grand theory.

One of the easiest ways to test (A) vs. (B), in this case, is just to try posing each answer as a question and seeing for which one “cognitive satisfaction” provides a better answer.

(A) Why is it hopeless to wish for history to proceed with the clarity and logic of a good story?
because having a clear, logical story to tell about the history of the world provides us with cognitive satisfaction.

(B) Why did the demise of grand theories give rise to people having a feeling of missing them?
because having a clear, logical story to tell about the history of the world [such as grand theories do] provides us with cognitive satisfaction.

For me, an answer to (A)’s question would sound like, “Because history is erratic and doesn’t conform to a regular pattern.”

(B) is essentially asking, “Why did people miss grand theories, once those theories were gone?”
‘cognitive satisfaction’ is a clear answer to that question.

‘contingency’ = ‘historical accident’ = random chance fact, not a necessary implication.