I've been asking myself this question for like half an hour now, so I may as well give this thread a crack.
First off, we can easily eliminate answers (B) through (D), as they are clearly not supported by the passage. This brings us to (A) vs. (E), which I had a hard time choosing between. I totally agree with you; (A) isn't strong enough for me to feel confident choosing it and moving on.
So I guess we can start with why (E) is wrong. (E) says that the author of passage A dismisses the ideas he discusses, whereas the author of passage B takes them more seriously. The only potential evidence I could see for this claim is that while the author of passage A ends up dismissing Whorf's hypothesis entirely, the author of passage B ends by saying that recent research either proves his ideas to be true, makes a neutral stance more likely, or disproves them. However, both passages spend a great deal of time dismissing Whorf's ideas, as evidenced by the whole of passage A and all the way until the middle of the second paragraph for passage B (author B even admits that recent research disproves Whorf's hypothesis). Because both passages are overall dismissive of Whorf, I see why this couldn't be the correct answer.
Additionally, this is a tone question, so the correct answer is likely to be centered around the tone of both passages. To me, nothing about the tone of either passage indicates a lack of seriousness.
(A) seems like the winner by process of elimination – passage A is written for a more general audience and passage B is written for a more academic one. However, it's worth noting that passage A talks about Whorf's errors as a whole, whereas passage B narrows in on Whorf's hypothesis concerning numerical conceptual understanding. Perhaps the more general scope of Passage A implies that it is written for a more general audience than passage B.
Hope this helped! Writing out why the wrong answer is wrong and why the right answer is right definitely help me learn!
James-Nashon August 10, 2020
This was helpful to me, thanks!
SawyerJeppsonon August 12, 2021
I believe the problem in answer choice E is actually the word "dismiss". Although passage A does outright reject Whorf, it makes a case for this rejection. That is different than simply dismissing it as the word "dismiss" seems to imply a flippant disregard or a refusal to deal with an utterly absurd hypothesis.
