In saying that Popper gives a certain idea "hyperbolic application" (line 7), the author of passage A means to sugges...

shunhe on May 29, 2020

Hi @hkolon,

Thanks for the question! So luckily, in the question, we’re given a specific line, and so when this happens we should go to that line and not just read that line, but also at least a few sentences above and below to give us the full context. That’s the key to figuring out what the author is doing with a given phrase: understanding the full context around that phrase.

So here, for example, we’re told about Karl Poppe’s contribution of the power of negative evidence, and then we’re told that Popper gives this logical asymmetry between positive and negative evidence hyperbolic application. We’re told later that Popper’s use of the logical asymmetry doesn’t adequately capture the actual situation scientists face, so the author clearly doesn’t completely agree with Popper. How is the author using hyperbolic application here? Well, the author’s saying that Popper’s conclusions are too radical, since it’s not necessarily the case that negative evidence will invalidate an entire theory, but sometimes, just auxiliary assumptions (this is all in the second paragraph). Here, it’s important to understand the entire context of the author’s argument to understand the usage here.

(E) is wrong because there are no “particular theories” to which Popper is trying to make his idea relevant.

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