The tendency toward overspecialization in the study of artifacts is unfortunate. Scholars can enhance their understa...

shunhe February 21, 2020

Hi @Reina,

Thanks for the question! This is a principle argument, so let’s first take a look at what the stimulus might be telling us. We’re told that scholars can understand later pieces of art by studying earlier pieces of art that influenced the later pieces of art, and the passage gives an example of how Arabic art influenced Spanish art and is indispensable to properly understanding it. It seems like there’s a principle here, then, of “if X influenced Y, and we want to properly understand Y, we need to properly understand X.”

Let’s take a look now at answer choice (E). (E) tells us that if we want to understand Aristotle’s philosophy, we need to be well acquainted with the philosophy of his intellectual mentor, Plato. Well, clearly, if Aristotle’s intellectual mentor was Plato, then Plato would have had an influence on Aristotle’s philosophy. Plato influenced Aristotle, and so in order to understand Aristotle’s philosophy, we have to understand Plato’s philosophy. This goes with our principle, and so (E) is the correct answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

Reina February 21, 2020

@shunhe thanks! It seems to me that principle question stems are the same or very similar to illustration ones. I know both are a subset of Must Be True but are they generally the same thing? What's the difference?