#22 - Critic: Historians purport to discover the patterns inherent in

[Shonan]

I am not sure where my understanding goes wrong, please give more insight into this question. Thanks advance!

Stimulus paraphrase:
All Historians impose patterns. Thus those patterns reveal the different historians' presuppositions( can we consider for sure the presuppositions also include the historian's own presuppositions who imposed patterns?)
I think the gap is between " imposed patterns" with "presuppositions". The critic assumes "imposed patterns" must reveal "presuppositions".

My understanding of Answer E is that says the historian put his own ideas into the patterns he came up with.

My question is the stimulus says patterns reveal the different historians' presuppositions, instead of "all historians' presuppositions". Back to the answer E, can some historian just reveal the presuppositions underlying other historians' attempts and without his own's?

[Robert Carroll]

Shonan,

I don't think it's much of a concern that answer choice (E) talks about each historian's presuppositions affecting the pattern he/she imposes. The stimulus claims, in the second sentence (a premise), that historians impose patterns on their own histories; i.e., each imposes his/her pattern on his/her history. The conclusion then leaps to a claim about presuppositions. Unless each historian's imposition of a pattern is leading to that historian's letting that very historian's presuppositions to affect the history, I don't think the stimulus argument works at all. So the assumption in answer choice (E) is what we're looking for.

I think you might be saying that a historian could impose a pattern based on the presuppositions of a different historian. That doesn't seem consistent with the stimulus, so isn't a real threat.

Robert Carroll