Quote:
It's a SE question
A number of historians have claimed to have discovered ______ laws governing the unfolding of events, but the consensus of contemporary historians is that they do not meet the criteria for scientific laws because they are numerous reasonable objects that can be raised against them.
A. Immutable
B. Antiquated
C. Pernicious
D. Scientific
E Unchangeable
F. Empirical
Can someone tell me how they would go about the question. I found A & E and D & F as a pair. At first I choose AE because it seem right. The more I read it again, I would with DF due to the question relating to Scientific/Political related. However AE was the right answer. Thanks in advance!
First, recognize that the GRE will not be directly redundant, so choice D is exceedingly unlikely to be correct. Second, the issue with the laws as articulated in the end of the sentence is that "numerous reasonable objects can be raised against them". Therefore, combining this information with the contrast trigger term of "but" we can determine that the blank should be something like "unobjectable". Compare the choices to this prediction.
A. Immutable - Means unchangeable, which in context could match unobjectable, so hold this choice.
B. Antiquated - Means old, which is unrelated to the prediction, so eliminate this choice.
C. Pernicious - Means harmful, which is not explicitly supported by the passage, so eliminate this choice.
D. Scientific - Means based on science, which in context is both redundant and does not automatically mean something is "unobjectable" solely by being based on science, so eliminate this choice.
E. Unchangeable - Matches choice A and in context could match unobjectable, so hold this choice and pair it with A.
F. Empirical - Means verifiable, which does not automatically means something is unobjectable, so eliminate this choice.
Hope this more clearly explains why the correct answers should be choices A and E!
Updated on: 23 May 2019, 02:42
42% (00:54) correct
