Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.

Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humankind the nuclear burden. No. Given the development of nuclear physics up to 1938, development that physicists throughout the world pursued in all innocence of any intention of finding the engine of a new weapon of mass destruction—only one of them, the remarkable Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, took that possibility seriously—the discovery of nuclear fission was inevitable. To stop it, you would have had to stop physics. If German scientists hadn’t made the discovery when they did, British, French, American, Russian, Italian, or Danish scientists would have done so, almost certainly within days or weeks. They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons. Here was no Faustian bargain, as movie directors and other naifs still find it intellectually challenging to imagine. Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might have hidden from the politicians and the generals. To the contrary, here was a new insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coax forth. “Make it seem inevitable,” Louis Pasteur used to advise his students when they prepared to write up their discoveries. But it was. To wish that it might have been ignored or suppressed is barbarous. “Knowledge,” Niels Bohr once noted, “is itself the basis for civilization.” You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, not always welcome. The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. “It is a profound and necessary truth,” Robert Oppenheimer would say, “that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”

...Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe. The discovery of microbes is gradually removing the prejudice that disease is a punishment from God. The discovery of evolution is gradually removing the prejudice that Homo sapiens is a separate and special creation.

Question 69

Based on the passage, which of the following statements is DEFINITELY NOT true?

Solution

Option A can be inferred from the last paragraph. The author quotes Niels Bohr and writes that "the modest but relentless goal of science is the gradual removal of prejudices." Therefore, it can be said that science gradually removes false beliefs about the world. Option B claims that science is not driven by the pursuit of truth, which is contradicted when the author quotes Robert Oppenheimer by writing that "the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them." Thus, it is not utility, but the pursuit of truth that drives science.

Option C can be inferred from the passage, the author writes, "Knowledge is itself the basis for civilisation, you cannot have the one without the other". Option D is also true as per the information provided ("the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence"). Option E, lastly, can also be inferred from the information provided in the passage: "to stop it (a discovery), you would have had to stop physics."

Out of the options provided, only option B is false based on the information presented in the passage, and is the correct answer.

Create a FREE account and get:

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