Instructions

The passage below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Understanding where you are in the world is a basic survival skill, which is why we, like most species come hard-wired with specialised brain areas to create cognitive maps of our surroundings. Where humans are unique, though, with the possible exception of honeybees, is that we try to communicate this understanding of the world with others. We have a long history of doing this by drawing maps — the earliest versions yet discovered were scrawled on cave walls 14,000 years ago. Human cultures have been drawing them on stone tablets, papyrus, paper and now computer screens ever since.

Given such a long history of human map-making, it is perhaps surprising that it is only within the last few hundred years that north has been consistently considered to be at the top. In fact, for much of human history, north almost never appeared at the top, according to Jerry Brotton, a map historian... "North was rarely put at the top for the simple fact that north is where darkness comes from," he says. "West is also very unlikely to be put at the top because west is where the sun disappears."

Confusingly, early Chinese maps seem to buck this trend. But, Brotton, says, even though they did have compasses at the time, that isn't the reason that they placed north at the top. Early Chinese compasses were actually oriented to point south, which was considered to be more desirable than deepest darkest north. But in Chinese maps, the Emperor, who lived in the north of the country was always put at the top of the map, with everyone else, his loyal subjects, looking up towards him. "In Chinese culture the Emperor looks south because it's where the winds come from, it's a good direction. North is not very good but you are in a position of subjection to the emperor, so you look up to him," says Brotton.

Given that each culture has a very different idea of who, or what, they should look up to it's perhaps not surprising that there is very little consistency in which way early maps pointed. In ancient Egyptian times the top of the world was east, the position of sunrise. Early Islamic maps favoured south at the top because most of the early Muslim cultures were north of Mecca, so they imagined looking up (south) towards it. Christian maps from the same era (called Mappa Mundi) put east at the top, towards the Garden of Eden and with Jerusalem in the centre.

So when did everyone get together and decide that north was the top? It's tempting to put it down to European explorers like Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Megellan, who were navigating by the North Star. But Brotton argues that these early explorers didn't think of the world like that at all. "When Columbus describes the world it is in accordance with east being at the top, he says. "Columbus says he is going towards paradise, so his mentality is from a medieval mappa mundi." We've got to remember, adds Brotton, that at the time, "no one knows what they are doing and where they are going."

Question 1

Which one of the following best describes what the passage is trying to do?

Video Solution

Solution

Option A: He gives explanation/reasoning behind the various methods adopted in history but does not question them.

Option C: The author doesnt discuss about the merits/ demirits or evaluate a method of map-making. It is involved more with the history of the method.

Option D speaks about myth. While most of the data are quoted from history, they cannot be misrepresented as a myth.

The author starts the passage by talking about the history of map making. The author then mentions how north was never put at the top in ancient times.
"Given such a long history of human map-making, it is perhaps surprising that it is only within the last few hundred years that north has been consistently considered to be at the top. In fact, for much of human history, north almost never appeared at the top".

He implicitly means that people have a preemptive notion of maps facing the north. He goes on to mention that it was considered a bad direction. He says that north being put at the top is a fairly recent phenomenon. He then goes on to discuss why different people started putting north at the top. He mentions that the reasons for different people putting north at the top were different from what people think now.

He cites various examples to show that north' s presence in top is more recent and due to varied factors.
Hence, he is trying to clear certain misconceptions about why north is put at the top in the maps. Thus, option B is the most suitable answer.

Question 2

Early maps did NOT put north at the top for all the following reasons EXCEPT

Video Solution

Solution

The passage mentions that the Chinese put North at the top of the map because the emperor would live in the North and he preferred to look towards South. Hence, the fact that South was preferred by some emperors is not a reason why North was put at the top. Hence, option B is false. All other options are mentioned in the passage.

Question 3

According to the passage, early Chinese maps placed north at the top because

Video Solution

Solution

We can straightaway eliminate options A and D. The passage states that the Chinese compasses pointed to magnetic south and that south was considered a more desirable direction. While option C is true, that is not the reason why North was placed at the top.

The passage states that the emperor lived in the north and hence maps depicted him as above his subjects. Thus, north was placed at the top of the map to show respect for the emperor. Thus, option B is correct.

Question 4

It can be inferred from the passage that European explorers like Columbus and Megellan

Video Solution

Solution

We can straightaway eliminate option A. The author says that though one might think that the trend of north-up maps was set by these explorers, this is in fact not true. Options B and D are also incorrect. The passage says that the explorers navigated with the help of the North Star.

In the passage, it is given that "When Columbus describes the world it is in accordance with east being at the top, he says. "Columbus says he is going towards paradise, so his mentality is from a medieval mappa mundi." Hence, we can infer that statement C is true.

Question 5

Which one of the following about the northern orientation of modern maps is asserted in the passage?

Video Solution

Solution

In the passage, the author discusses how North was traditionally not put on the top of early maps. The author explicitly refutes the role of the compass and of European explorers in placing North at the top of maps. Hence, we can eliminate options A and B. The author says that East was placed at the top of Christian maps. Hence, option C is also incorrect. Thought the author counters all known explanations as to why North was placed on the top, he does not offer any explanation of his own. Hence, option D is correct.

Question 6

The role of natural phenomena in influencing map-making conventions is seen most clearly in

Video Solution

Solution

According to the passage, early Egyptian maps placed the East at the top because that was the position of sunrise. Hence, we can say that natural phenomena dictated the map-making convention in this case. Thus, option A is correct.

Options B and D are incorrect as the conventions were decided by religious factors and not natural phenomena. Option C also can be eliminated as the orientation was a result of their desire to honour their emperor. Hence, the answer is option A.

Instructions

The passage below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

I used a smartphone GPS to find my way through the cobblestoned maze of Geneva's Old Town, in search of a handmade machine that changed the world more than any other invention. Near a 13th-century cathedral in this Swiss city on the shores of a lovely lake, I found what I was looking for: a Gutenberg printing press. "This was the Internet of its day — at least as influential as the iPhone," said Gabriel de Montmollin, the director of the Museum of the Reformation, toying with the replica of Johann Gutenberg's great invention.

Before the invention of the printing press, it used to take four monks up to a year to produce a single book. With the advance in movable type in 15th-century Europe, one press could crank out 3,000 pages a day. Before long, average people could travel to places that used to be unknown to them — with maps! Medical information passed more freely and quickly, diminishing the sway of quacks. The printing press offered the prospect that tyrants would never be able to kill a book or suppress an idea. Gutenberg's brainchild broke the monopoly that clerics had on scripture. And later, stirred by pamphlets from a version of that same press, the American colonies rose up against a king and gave birth to a nation.

So, a question in the summer of this 10th anniversary of the iPhone: has the device that is perhaps the most revolutionary of all time given us a single magnificent idea? Nearly every advancement of the written word through new technology has also advanced humankind. Sure, you can say the iPhone changed everything. By putting the world's recorded knowledge in the palm of a hand, it revolutionized work, dining, travel and socializing. It made us more narcissistic — here's more of me doing cool stuff! — and it unleashed an army of awful trolls. We no longer have the patience to sit through a baseball game without that reach to the pocket. And one more casualty of Apple selling more than a billion phones in a decade's time: daydreaming has become a lost art.

For all of that, I'm still waiting to see if the iPhone can do what the printing press did for religion and democracy...the Geneva museum makes a strong case that the printing press opened more minds than anything else...it's hard to imagine the French or American revolutions without those enlightened voices in print...

Not long after Steve Jobs introduced his iPhone, he said the bound book was probably headed for history's attic. Not so fast. After a period of rapid growth in e-books, something closer to the medium for Chaucer's volumes has made a great comeback

The hope of the iPhone, and the Internet in general, was that it would free people in closed societies. But the failure of the Arab Spring, and the continued suppression of ideas in North Korea, China and Iran, has not borne that out. The iPhone is still young. It has certainly been "one of the most important, world-changing and successful products in. history," as Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook said. But I'm not sure if the world changed for the better with the iPhone — as it did with the printing press — or merely changed.

Question 7

The printing press has been likened to the Internet for which one of the following reasons?

Video Solution

Solution

In the first passage, the author mentions printing press as the internet of its day. Immediately, in the next paragraph he elucidates how printing press helped in spreading ideas and information. Thus, the author likened the printing press to the internet because it enabled access to new information and sharing of ideas.

Hence, option A is the correct answer.

Question 8

According to the passage, the invention of the printing press did all of the following EXCEPT

Video Solution

Solution

From the lines "Medical information passed more freely and quickly, diminishing the sway of quacks" and "Gutenberg's brainchild broke the monopoly that clerics had on scripture" , we can infer that option B is true.

From the lines "And later, stirred by pamphlets from a version of that same press, the American colonies rose up against a king and gave birth to a nation" and "it's hard to imagine the French or American revolutions without those enlightened voices in print", we can infer option A is true.

From the lines "Before the invention of the printing press, it used to take four monks up to a year to produce a single book. With the advance in movable type in 15th-century Europe, one press could crank out 3,000 pages a day", we can infer that option C is true.

Option D has not been stated nor implied anywhere in the passage.

Question 9

Steve Jobs predicted which one of the following with the introduction of the iPhone?

Video Solution

Solution

Refer to the following lines - "Not long after Steve Jobs introduced his iPhone, he said the bound book was probably headed for history's attic". Thus, we can infer that Steve Jobs predicted that reading printed books would become a thing of the past. Hence, option C is the right answer.

Question 10

"I'm still waiting to see if the iPhone can do what the printing press did for religion and democracy." The author uses which one of the following to indicate his uncertainty?

Video Solution

Solution

The author says that the iPhone has not fulfilled its potential as a piece of revolutionary technology. He goes on to say that the hope was that the iPhone could help in liberating people in closed societies. However, the failure of the Arab spring and continued suppression in places like North Korea shows that this has not happened. Hence, the author uses the continued suppression of free speech in closed societies to indicate why he is still uncertain about the potential of the iPhone. Hence, option C is correct.

Question 11

The author attributes the French and American revolutions to the invention of the printing press because

Video Solution

Solution

Refer to the line "it's hard to imagine the French or American revolutions without those enlightened voices in print". Hence, from this we can straightaway eliminate options A and C. Between options B and D, B correctly captures the point made by the author. The printing press allowed the spread of enlightened voices and as a result people were exposed to new ideas on freedom and democracy.

Option D slightly distorts what is given in the passage. The passage does not mention any revolutionary "strategies". Hence, we can eliminate this option.

Thus, the answer is option B.

Question 12

The main conclusion of the passage is that the new technology has

Video Solution

Solution

The main point of the passage is that unlike the Gutenberg printing press, the iPhone has in comparison done nothing to make the society more liberated or enlightened. This point has been accurately captured by option B.

The author is not weighing the advantages or disadvantages of new technology. Hence, we can eliminate option A.

The author does not say that the society has rapidly changed as a result of new technology. In fact, he says that nothing really has changed as a result of it.

The author says that people are no longer daydreaming as a result of new technology. Hence, option D, which contradicts what is given in the passage, can be eliminated.

Instructions

The passage below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand-name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year... Sears Holdings — which owns Kmart — said in March that there's "substantial doubt" it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year. So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.

Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the e-commerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.

But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car- heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America's public square for the last 60 years.

So what happens when it disappears?

Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.

That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination. of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn' t: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers, Air Jordans....

A growing number of Americans, however, don't see the need to go to any Macy's at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist."

Question 13

The central idea of this passage is that:

Video Solution

Solution

The author argues that malls were more than just shopping places. Towards the end of the passage, the author tries to invoke a sense of nostalgia by stating how malls used to play an important role in everyone's life and how that function is getting lost.
Let us evaluate the options.

Option B states that the advantages of the malls outweigh the disadvantages. The author has not mentioned anything about the disadvantages of the malls. Therefore, we can easily eliminate option B.

Option D states that malls are closing down since people have found an alternate way to shop. Though the option is true, the main point of the author is not that malls are closing down. The author is concerned about the fact that malls were places of congregation and the closure of malls takes a social function away with them. Therefore, we can eliminate option D as well.

Options A and C are close. Option A states that the closure of malls has affected the social and economic life of America. However, the author states that the closure of malls is reflective of the changing social structure of America. Option A gets the relationship backwards and hence, option A can be eliminated.

Option C states that malls used to perform a social function that has been lost. This seems to be the main point that the author is trying to emphasize through the paragraph. The author states how malls used to be places of congregation and how the new generation finds no need to go to malls. Therefore, option C is the right answer.

Question 14

Why does the author say in paragraph 2, 'the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter'?

Video Solution

Solution

No where has it been mentioned that Amazon is helping brands go online. Therefore, we can eliminate option C.

Option D states that the purpose of the line is to indicate that the shopping habits of the middle class America has changed. However, the author talks about shopping habits towards the end of the passage. The author has not introduced the topic of 'shopping habits' when the given line has been mentioned. Therefore, we can eliminate option D as well.

Option B states that the author uses the line to indicate that the malls and distribution centres are located in the same area. However, the author states that the distribution centres are replacing the malls. He does not intend to convey that they co-exist. Therefore, we can eliminate option B as well.

Option A states that the author uses the line to indicate the irony of the situation. Option A captures the fact that the author finds it ironic that distribution centres are springing up near the places where the malls once existed. Therefore, option A is the right answer.

Question 15

In the first paragraph, the phrase "real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court..." suggests that they

Video Solution

Solution

In the first paragraph, the author states that "many of them the brand-name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court", indicating that the brand outlets used to be sought after once but are no longer in demand. The author states that the real estate developers used to fight each other over these outlets earlier. Therefore, we can infer that the real estate developers no longer show the kind of enthusiasm they did (since the outlets are closing down) and hence, option B is the right answer.

Question 16

The author calls the mall an ecosystem unto itself because

Video Solution

Solution

The author calls malls an ecosystem since they served as places of congregation. The author compares the market places from ancient Greece to emphasize how malls, just like the market places through out the history, served as the places of social interaction as well. Only option C captures the fact that malls serves both as commercial and social centres and hence, option C is the right answer.

Question 17

Why does the author say that the mall has been America's public square?

Video Solution

Solution

The main point that the author places is that malls served as places of social interaction and cannot be reduced to merely places of commercial activity. Therefore, the author compares the malls as America's public square to show the bustling social life that the malls hosted. Therefore, option D is the right answer.

Question 18

The author describes 'Perfume clouds in the department stores' in order to

Video Solution

Solution

In the last 2 paragraphs, the author tries to invoke a sense of nostalgia by describing the malls. He tries to make the readers feel the ambiance and vibrance of the malls by taking us down the memory lane. Option B adopts an objective tone. The author does not merely describe a mall. He tries to invoke our memories of the malls. Options C and D can be eliminated since the purpose of the author is not to emphasize that all brands were available at one place or to establish the reason for the sweet smell that the malls carried. The author tries to make an emotional appeal and only option A captures this point. Therefore, option A is the right answer.

Instructions

The passage below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Scientists have long recognised the incredible diversity within a species. But they thought it reflected evolutionary changes that unfolded imperceptibly, over millions of years. That divergence between populations within a species was enforced, according to Ernst Mayr, the great evolutionary biologist of the 1940s, when a population was separated from the rest of the species by a mountain range or a desert, preventing breeding across the divide over geologic scales of time. Without the separation, gene flow was relentless. But as the separation persisted, the isolated population grew apart and speciation occurred.

In the mid-1960s, the biologist Paul Ehrlich — author of The Population Bomb (1968) — and his Stanford University colleague Peter Raven challenged Mayr's ideas about speciation. They had studied checkerspot butterflies living in the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in California, and it soon became clear that they were not examining a single population. Through years of capturing, marking and then recapturing the butterflies, they were able to prove that within the population, spread over just 50 acres of suitable checkerspot habitat, there were three groups that rarely interacted despite their very close proximity.

Among other ideas, Ehrlich and Raven argued in a now classic paper from 1969 that gene flow was not as predictable and ubiquitous as Mayr and his cohort maintained, and thus evolutionary divergence between neighbouring groups in a population was probably common. They also asserted that isolation and gene flow were less important to evolutionary divergence than natural selection (when factors such as mate choice, weather, disease or predation cause better-adapted individuals to survive and pass on their successful genetic traits). For example, Ehrlich and Raven suggested that, without the force of natural selection, an isolated population would remain unchanged and that, in other scenarios, natural selection could be strong enough to overpower gene flow...

Question 19

Which of the following best sums up Ehrlich and Raven's argument in their classic 1969 paper?

Video Solution

Solution

In the last paragraph, the author uses the line "They also asserted that isolation and gene flow were less important to evolutionary divergence than natural selection". Also, through the example of checkerspot butterflies, the author brings to light the fact that isolation, though a factor, is not very dominant in influencing speciation. Therefore, option C is the right answer.

Question 20

All of the following statements are true according to the passage EXCEPT

Video Solution

Solution

In the second line of the first paragraph, the author mentions that evolutionary changes evolve imperceptibly over time.
In the third paragraph, the author mentions that "Isolation and gene flow were less important to evolutionary divergence than natural selection". Therefore, we can infer that gene flow contributes to evolutionary divergence.
The author explains that 3 species of checkerspot butterflies living within 50 acres hardly interact with each other. Therefore, we can infer option D.

The author mentioned the book "the population bomb" as an introduction to the biologist Paul Ehrlich.
Option B cannot be inferred from the passage and hence, it is the right answer.

Question 21

The author discusses Mayr, Ehrlich and Raven to demonstrate that

Video Solution

Solution

The author provides 'Checkerspot butterflies' as an example to drive home his point. The primary intention of the author is not to discuss checkerspot butterflies. Therefore, we can eliminate option D. Option B can be eliminated as well since the author has not mentioned that
the theories are widely accepted.

The author explains the contrasting views of the scientists to show that speciation is a debated topic. Option A states that evolution is a controversial topic. The passage deals with speciation. We cannot generalize speciation to evolution. Also, the intention of the author is to show the differing views among the scientists rather than to establish that the topic is controversial. Therefore, option C is the right answer.

Instructions

The passage below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Do sports mega events like the summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting...several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the Games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the summer Olympic Games themselves generate total revenue of $4 billion to $5 billion, but the lion's share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International Sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.

Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefit is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the Bird's Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic Stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.

Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities — not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?

Further, cities must consider the human cost. Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.

Question 22

The central point in the first paragraph is that the economic benefits of the Olympic Games

Video Solution

Solution

The author expresses his views that hosting Olympics cost a lot and the financial prospects are not that good. Towards the end of the first paragraph, he uses the line "Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities". From this line, we can infer that the author states that there are any benefits, it should be from advertisements and the use of the facilities (implying that the other streams are unlikely to yield any revenue).

It has not been mentioned that the 3 committees share the profit equally. Even if they do, it is not the main point that the author intends to convey through the first paragraph. Therefore, we can eliminate option A.

Option B states that the revenue accrues through advertisement and ticket sales. No information has been provided about 'ticket sales' and hence, option B can be eliminated.

Option D states that the revenues are usually eroded by the expenditure incurred by host city. The second paragraph builds on revenue from 'advertising and infrastructure' implying that the primary purpose of the first paragraph was to introduce these topics rather than to lament that the expenditure of the host city erodes the revenue. Therefore, option C is the right answer.

Question 23

Sports facilities built for the Olympics are not fully utilised after the Games are over because

Video Solution

Solution

In the second paragraph, the author mentions that the facilities are not fully utilized due to their sheer capacity. 'The facilities benefit is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy'. Nowhere has it been mentioned that the facilities become outdated or that they are located far from the city. The author mentions in the second paragraph that the structures are expensive to maintain.

Therefore, option A is the right answer.

Question 24

The author feels that the Games place a burden on the host city for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that

Video Solution

Solution

We can infer option A from the line 'Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?'. The author feels that the urban real estate can be put to better use than hosting Olympics.

The author mentions that the fiscal resources can be used for more productive pursuits than hosting Olympics in the last line of the passage.
We can infer option B from the line "Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated ".

Option D cannot be inferred from the passage and hence, it is the right answer.

Instructions

For the following questions answer them individually

Question 25

The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author' s position.
To me, a "classic" means precisely the opposite of what my predecessors understood: a work is classical by reason of its resistance to contemporaneity and supposed universality, by reason of its capacity to indicate human particularity and difference in that past epoch. The classic is not what tells me about shared humanity — or, more truthfully put, what lets me recognize myself as already present in the past, what nourishes in me the illusion that everything has been like me and has existed only to prepare the way for me. Instead, the classic is what gives access to radically different forms of human consciousness for any given generation of readers, and thereby expands for them the range of possibilities of what it means to be a human being.

Video Solution

Solution

The author states that a classic is not which puts him at the centre of the universe but one which gives access to radically different forms of human consciousness.

Let us evaluate the options.

Option A states that a classic should focus on unified human experience. The author mentions the exact opposite in the paragraph. Therefore, we can eliminate option A. We can eliminate option D too since it mentions the polar opposite of what that is mentioned in the paragraph. The author is of the view that a classic should go beyond providing a unified human experience and expose one to radically different forms of human consciousness.

We can eliminate option B since it states that a classic focuses on common humanity. Only option C captures the essence of the given paragraph and hence, option C is the right answer.

Question 26

The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author' s position.

A translator of literary works needs a secure hold upon the two languages involved, supported by a good measure of familiarity with the two cultures. For an Indian translating works in an Indian language into English, finding satisfactory equivalents in a generalized western culture of practices and symbols in the original would be less difficult than gaining fluent control of contemporary English. When a westerner works on texts in Indian languages the interpretation of cultural elements will be the major challenge, rather than control over the grammar and essential vocabulary of the language concerned. It is much easier to remedy lapses in language in a text translated into English, than flaws of content. Since it is easier for an Indian to learn the English language than it is for a Briton or American to comprehend Indian culture, translations of Indian texts is better left to Indians.

Video Solution

Solution

Let us note down the important points put down by the author.

Indians have better knowledge of their culture. A westerner might be fluent in the language but will find it hard to relate to the culture. Indians, on the other hand, might be less fluent in the language but will be able to preserve the culture when a text is translated. Therefore, Indians should translate Indian texts.

Let us evaluate the options now.

Option A states that Indians and Westerners face the same challenges but they have different skill sets. Indians and Westerners face different challenges while translating the text. Indians face difficulty in the language and westerners face difficulty in relating to the culture. Therefore, we can eliminate option A.

Option D fails to capture the fact that the primary intention of the paragraph is not to pit Indians against westerners but to suggest that Indians should translate Indian texts. Also, it does not capture the fact that Indians will retain the advantage only when translating the Indian texts. Therefore, we can eliminate option D.

Option B, though true, fails to capture the India-centric angle that the paragraph adopts. The paragraph places huge emphasis on the term 'Indian texts' and only option C manages to capture this fact. Also, only option C captures the fact that it is easier to remedy errors in the language than to fix errors in the interpretation of culture. Therefore, option C is the right answer.

Question 27

The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author' s position.

For each of the past three years, temperatures have hit peaks not seen since the birth of meteorology, and probably not for more than 110,000 years. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is at its highest level in 4 million years. This does not cause storms like Harvey — there have always been storms and hurricanes along the Gulf of Mexico — but it makes them wetter and more powerful. As the seas warm, they evaporate more easily and provide energy to storm fronts. As the air above them warms, it holds more water vapour. For every half a degree Celsius in warming, there is about a 3% increase in atmospheric moisture content. Scientists call this the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. This means the skies fill more quickly and have more to dump. The storm surge was greater because sea levels have risen 20 cm as a result of more than 100 years of human- related global warming which has melted glaciers and thermally expanded the volume of seawater.

Video Solution

Solution

Let us note down the important points in the given paragraph.

Global warming does not cause storms but make them more powerful. Due to the increase in the temperature, the air can absorb more moisture. This relationship (the change in the ability to absorb water with the increase in the temperature) is given by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation.

Let us evaluate the options.

The author provides storm Harvey as an example to illustrate how increased temperatures can arm the storms with more power. Harvey is not the central theme of the given paragraph. We can eliminate options A and D since option D places much emphasis on storm Harvey and option A states that there is no relationship between the increase in temperature and the power of storms.

Option B states that the Clausius-Clapeyron equation cannot predict the quantum of destruction that a storm might cause. This point is totally out of context with respect to what that is being discussed in the paragraph. Therefore, we can eliminate option B as well.

Option C precisely explains the mechanism through which global warming makes the modern storms more destructive. Therefore, option C is the right answer.

Question 28