People ought to take into account a discipline's blemished origins when assessing the scientific value of that discip...

shunhe on June 26, 2020

Hi jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at what this stimulus is saying. It tells us that people should take into account a discipline’s origins when assessing its scientific value. Then, it gives us chemistry as an example to back up this conclusion. Chemistry, it says, has many landmark results obtained by alchemists, and those people’s superstitions and appeals to magic were a big part of early chemistry.

Now we’re asked to find a flaw in the argument. And doing a bit of pre-phrasing, it should be pretty obvious that the whole argument is flawed. It’s basically saying you should judge the sins of the son based on the sins of the father; that you should judge a discipline’s origins when assessing its current scientific value. This is clearly flawed; in this passage, the author draws conclusions about modern-day chemistry based on medieval age alchemy.

Now take a look at (B), which tells us that the author fails to consider how chemistry’s current theories and practices differs from those of the alchemists mentioned. Well, this matches our prephrase. In other words, (B) tells us that current chemistry is just way different from alchemy way back then. And so we shouldn’t judge one based on the other, even though they may have had some ties in the past.

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