Q13

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noah
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Atticus Finch
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Q13

by noah Fri Oct 28, 2011 7:19 pm

The strange wording in this question stem is confining the question to what we learn are the opinions of the historians of science - perhaps they have some other opinions, but we only have to deal with the ones that this critic tells us about. This is a good question to think about before looking at the answers. What does the author think about these new historians? In short, they're wrong, but there's some good stuff in there. They're wrong because the natural world is stable in the sense that it's not changing based on our beliefs. Their ideas are useful in that the new historians said some interesting stuff about the social processes impact how scientific discoveries are made, made public, etc. - and this stuff does play into history. (D) notes this.

(A) is too extreme. Any credibility?

(B) is tempting, as the author agrees that the way that science happens is an interesting social process, however, the author never talks about studying the new historians themselves. The author wants us to study the scientific groups, not the historians.

(C) is contradicted - the author is most interested in the new historians discussion of how scientific groups work.

(E) is unsupported.