Logical Reasoning

PT128 · S2 · Q24 Clarissa: The natural sciences would

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Clarissa: The natural sciences would not have made such progress but for the power of mathematics.

Clarissa's 1st Claim

The natural sciences wouldn't have made such progress without the power of math. Does Myungsook disagree? Is he saying that natural sciences would have made this progress even without math?

Not really. It doesn't seem like M's directly addressing how much progress natural science would / wouldn't have made.

Clarissa's 2nd Claim

No observation is worth serious attention unless it is stated precisely in quantitative terms. Does Myungsook disagree? Is he saying that even if something isn't yet stated precisely in quantitative terms, an observation could still be worthy of serious attention?

Yes, M does seem to be saying that. M's saying 1st you "explore" the observations themselves (you give them serious attention). Stating them precisely in quantitative terms is the last task. So M thinks that observations can be worthy of serious attention, even before they're converted precisely to numbers.

Goal

Let's look for something like Clarissa's 2nd claim: whether or not you have to wait until something is stated precisely in quantitative terms in order to find it worthy of serious attention, or if it's worth exploring before it's been converted to numbers.

24.

Clarissa and Myungsook's statements provide the most support for claiming that they disagree about whether

mathematics has been a highly
No Support Person 2
Myungsook didn't really have any response to Clarissa's first claim. We don't know how M feels about math's role in scientific progress.
16% picked this
converting observations into quantitative terms
No Support Person 1
Clarissa never discussed how easy / difficult it is to convert something to precise quantitative terms.
2% picked this
not all observations can be
No Support from Either
We couldn't derive from either paragraph the notion that "some observations cannot be stated precisely in quantitative terms".
8% picked this
Correct
successfully doing natural science demands
Why this is right
This answer is brutal, so it's a real "process of elimination / find the closest thing to what we were looking for" type of situation. M would agree with this claim. M thinks that you can only convert observations to numbers once you've thoroughly explored the observations themselves. In other words, doing science demands/requires carefully considering observations before you've stated them precisely in quantitative terms. C would disagree with this claim, since C says "until you state an observation in precise quantitative terms, no observation is even worthy of serious attention". To simplify, they're arguing over which comes first "serious, thorough exploration of an observation" or "converting that observation into math". C is saying, "You can't even get started with exploring an observation until it's in math terms." M is saying, "You can't put something in math terms, until you've carefully considered the observation." The context of the conversation is the progress of natural science, which is how "successfully doing natural science" gets shoehorned into this answer choice.
Skill tested: Agree/Disagree · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
68% picked this
useful scientific theories require the
No Support from Either
We couldn't derive from either person that "if you don't apply mathematics, no scientific theory can be useful". Clarissa thinks, "if we didn't have math, science would not have made such progress", but that's not as strong as "no scientific theory would be useful". Furthermore, nothing M says would support the disagree position that "sometime you have useful scientific theories without any application of math".
6% picked this

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