LSAT and Law School Admissions Forum

Get expert LSAT preparation and law school admissions advice from PowerScore Test Preparation.

 Administrator
PowerScore Staff
  • PowerScore Staff
  • Posts: 8919
  • Joined: Feb 02, 2011
|
#79247
Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!
 heartofsunshine
  • Posts: 34
  • Joined: Jun 13, 2019
|
#67920
I answered with choice B instead. I took the "clamor of seventeenth-century scientific rhetoric" to mean the opposing view to the Royal Society, which I took to mean the viewpoint that scientists should perform the work themselves. I am confused because I thought the Royal Society believed that the scientists should not perform the work themselves, when it says they should not "demean themselves by mucking about..." but answer choice D goes against this and says the Royal society asserts that "scientists should themselves be responsible.." Because of this I automatically eliminated D. How can I clarify this?

Thank you!
 Jeremy Press
PowerScore Staff
  • PowerScore Staff
  • Posts: 1000
  • Joined: Jun 12, 2017
|
#67999
Hi heartofsunshine,

I think your confusion on this question is coming from a misread of the portion of the first paragraph that says the Royal Society's leaders insisted that scientists "were not to think themselves demeaned by the mucking about with chemicals, furnaces, and pumps." In other words, the scientists were not supposed to think of being "hands-on" (using chemicals, furnaces, and pumps) as something that demeaned them. Rather, they should see it as honorable. Notice the next sentence says (and this is still reporting the leaders' opinions), "the willingness of each of them to become, as Boyle himself said, a mere "drudge" and "under-builder" in the search for God's truth in nature was taken as a sign of their nobility and Christian piety." So the Royal Society's rhetoric was that scientists should see being hands-on as a sign of "nobility and Christian piety," a good thing.

Now it's true there was a distinction between that rhetoric and the way scientists like Boyle behaved (as the author clarifies when describing the culture's more broad contempt for wage-earning employees). But the Royal Society did assert in its rhetoric that scientists should be hands on, and should see this as noble and a sign of virtue.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy
 TZHUUMD22
  • Posts: 12
  • Joined: Jun 06, 2020
|
#76741
Hello PowerScore,

For this question I chose B instead of D as well, with full knowledge that the Royal Society of London too condemns scientists who are not "hands-on." However, due to the specific locality where the phrase at issue (lines 39-40) occurred, I see B as a better alternative since the forthcoming descriptions (after line 40) are more aligned with the prephrase which will yield answer B and make D seem out of context, since it was mentioned in a farther locality in the passage.

I wonder if my thought process is appropriate in the LSAT context, since I believe LSAT tests the readers' ability to make detailed distinctions in the passages. Please let me know about the correct thought process for this type of questions.

Thank you very much!

T
 Paul Marsh
PowerScore Staff
  • PowerScore Staff
  • Posts: 290
  • Joined: Oct 15, 2019
|
#77069
Hi TZHUUMD22!

It's true that (B) uses a lot of the same language as the section of the passage around line 40. However, be careful about picking an answer choice just because it has a lot of the same language as the referenced section in the passage. This is a common trap of the test makers. We're not looking for the answer choice that uses the most language from that section of the passage, we're looking for the answer choice that expresses the 17th century rhetoric surrounding science. (B) is incorrect because we are never told that 17th century scientists ridiculed the hoity-toity upper class that didn't want to get its hands dirty; rather, we know that they simply were ok with getting their hands dirty.

You are correct that the support for answer choice (D) comes primarily from the sentence beginning in line 6 of the passage (which outlines how 17th century scientists thought). That is ok. Just because a question stem like this refers us to a specific line in the passage, that doesn't mean the answer to the question will necessarily come from that part of the passage. The part of the passage we're referred to is just a starting point, we also want to look back at any other part of the passage that discussed the same concept.

Hope that helps!

Get the most out of your LSAT Prep Plus subscription.

Analyze and track your performance with our Testing and Analytics Package.