deedubbew Wrote:Why not answer choice C?
I'll get to this and I'll also explain this problem in my own way too. Sometimes having many explanations really helps future test takers (some explanations click, others do not).This argument has one premise with two conclusions. For the purposes of clarity, I am going to break this argument up into two arguments with the same premises but different conclusions.
Argument #1Titanium found in the ink of Gutenberg Bible
+
Titanium found in another 15th century Bible, B-36
+
Titanium not found in any other of the numerous books analyzed
→
Hypothesis that B-36 was printed by Gutenberg = strongly supported
Things to notice:
(1) The conclusion is not validating or invalidating the hypothesis. All it is saying is that it is "strongly supported." The hypothesis could still be true; the hypothesis could still be false.
(2) This argument makes sense. In fact, I think this argument is very rational. It is saying, "hey! Gutenberg had this ink, B-36 had this ink, no one else had this ink, Gutenberg probably printed B-36. That, to me at least, makes total sense and the fact that this conclusion has weak language ("strongly supports") makes this even better.
Argument #2Titanium found in the ink of Gutenberg Bible
+
Titanium found in another 15th century Bible, B-36
+
Titanium not found in any other of the numerous books analyzed
→
Presence of titanium ink in Vinland Map can no longer be regarded as a reason to doubt the map's authenticity
Things to notice:
(1) Once again, we get a fairly weak conclusion. It is not saying that we should accept or deny the Map's authenticity, just that this can no longer be a reason to doubt it.
(2) This is also a pretty straightforward argument. The author is saying, "hey, B-36 had titanium ink and was printed in the 15th century. Vinland Map has titanium ink and thus we cannot just say that it wasn't printed in the 15th century just because it has titanium ink. This argument looks good and it makes sense.
THE PROBLEM:Argument #1 is basing its conclusion - that Gutenberg printed B-36 on the idea of
rarity: "there aren't any books that we saw with titanium ink so the hypothesis that Gutenberg printed the B-36 after using titanium ink in another Bible is warranted."
Argument #2 is basing its conclusion - that the Vinland Map cannot be discounted as inauthentic just because of its ink selection - on the idea that this titanium ink
was used more widely in the 15th century. Look at the language of the #2's conclusion, "
can no longer be regarded as a reason for doubting the map's authenticity..." Is this true? Not really. The author said it himself,
the ink was not that widely used!
This is the problem. On one hand, the author is saying that the ink
was not widely used enough to conclude that Gutenberg was in fact the printer but, on the other hand, the author is saying that ink
was widely used enough to conclude that we shouldn't doubt its origin in the 15th century. This is fishy.
DISCUSSION/HOW TO SOLVE: I'd bet very few people could see this right away. I know I didn't. The best way to solve this, I think, is process of elimination. In fact, I think the authors of the LSAT
wanted you to solve it this way. Why can we eliminate the rest of these answers?
(B) "Would know" We don't care what people knew or didn't know. The point is that the titanium in the ink
was used or
not used. We can make an argument about the 15th century by saying, "we can tell if something from the 15th century is from the 15th century if the pages yellow. People from that era used a special type of paper that yellows at a rate of 94% every 500 years." Obviously this is made up but the point is that these 15th century people did not need to
know anything about their tools for us to show that a particular characteristic about them - known or unknown - is enough for us to pin those particular tools to a certain time period.
(C) There are two things wrong: "Determination" and "location." We are not
determining the date. The conclusion just calls for us to say that we "can no longer regarded XYZ as a reason..." not "from the titanium ink, we can determine that the Vinland Map is from the 15th century." In addition, "location" is simply never brought up and we don't care about it.
(D) We don't care about "appreciation." This is way off the mark.
(E) This centers on the "discovery" but we aren't concerned about that; we are concerned with the origin of the documents. It doesn't matter when things are discovered because we are arguing about the origin!
Conclusion: this problem is hard. It will probably be near-impossible to solve by looking for the right answer but much easier by looking for the wrong ones.