Instructions

Read the passage below and answer the 3 associated questions:

The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The “producers” and users of knowledge must know, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these languages whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements.
We may thus expect a thorough exteriorisation of knowledge with respect to the “knower,” at whatever point he or she may occupy in the knowledge process. The old principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals, is becoming obsolete and will become ever more so. The relationships of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume - that is, the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.
Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its “use-value.”

Question 19

Which of the following statements BEST captures the essence of the passage?

Solution

The author is trying to convey the idea that knowledge has gradually become a commercial entity that is no longer held accountable by the value of truth it holds. From various instances in the passage like "knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production" infer this message.
Option B is irrelevant to the message of the passage, while C, D & E do not capture the essence entirely.

Hence the correct answer is option A.


Create a FREE account and get:

  • All Quant Formulas and shortcuts PDF
  • 15 XAT previous papers with solutions PDF
  • XAT Trial Classes for FREE

    cracku

    Boost your Prep!

    Download App