Reading Comprehension

PT144 · S1 · P4 · Q23 Karl Popper

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Passage A

The author presents and mildly critiques the ideas of Karl Popper regarding positive and negative evidence.

She starts out acknowledging the merits of his contribution. Negative evidence is definitely more powerful than positive evidence, since negative evidence has the power to prove a theory wrong, whereas positive evidence only shows that "so far, it's always been correct".

The rest of the first paragraph involves a series of attributions to Popper. Frequently, if an author is taking pains to separate someone else's ideas from her own, it's because a disagreement is around the bend. We can also see a negative attitudinal marker with the work "hyperbolic", which means exaggerating to an unrealistic degree.

Paragraph 2 delivers on our suspicions with a "However" author pivot. The second paragraph stresses that Popper goes overboard in acting like , since in the real world it's messier than that.

Testing scientific theories (to see whether we get positive or negative evidence, i.e. matching the predictions vs. not-matching the predictions) means assuming that other theories are correct, that your measuring instruments are working correctly, and potentially other assumptions.

So when negative evidence is found, it isn't immediately clear what that's telling us: it could be telling us, as Popper is thinking, that the theory we're testing is wrong but it could just be that one of our other theories is wrong, or that something went awry with the measurement.

Passage B

As we start the second passage, we're listening attentively for the first signs of Overlap. In the second sentence, we see "auxiliary assumptions" (which to me sticks out, because prior to Passage A, I had never heard the expression "auxiliary premises" before).

So we pause and possibly re-read that part of Passage A to dial in the meaning / significance of auxiliary assumptions to Passage A:

when a measurement doesn't match Theory A's predictions, - maybe Theory A is wrong - maybe an auxiliary assumption is wrong (e.g. Theory B is wrong. Idea X is wrong. Our instruments failed)

Passage B then takes us through two different examples.

Uranus Mercury

Measure U's orbit M's orbit doesn't didn't match didn't match match Newton's theory Newton's theory theory Reason for negative evidence

Aux. assump = wrong. Theory = wrong. We'd assumed there At first we thought weren't any planets aux assump of no nearby Uranus, planets near M was because we wrong, but once hadn't found Einstein's math Neptune yet worked, we found out Newt's theory was wrong.

23.

In saying that Popper gives a certain idea "hyperbolic application" (third sentence of passage A), the author of passage A means to suggest that Popper

extends the idea to cases
Not About Hyperbole
In the second sentence of Paragraph 2, the author does acknowledge that Popper's thinking applies to cases in which a theory deductively entails a false prediction. She goes onto say that in the practical world of science, this is rarely happening. So the author does think that Popper is extending his thinking to cases (real world science) where it doesn't apply. But the author's meaning of 'hyperbolic application' is "too strongly put", because hyperbole means exaggeration. That's slightly different from this answer which is, "too broadly extended". I could consider this choice if there weren't a closer match to "you're overstating the power of negative evidence".
10% picked this
underestimates the significance of the
Opposite
"underestimating" is the opposite of "hyperbolizing", which is all about overstating something.
1% picked this
commits a logical fallacy in
Out of Scope: logical fallacy
Hyperbolizing is definitely a dubious way of arguing, but no one really calls that a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies tend to be about making some type of assumption (assuming that if it's sufficient, it's necessary ... assuming that if it's true of the part, it's true of the whole). There's no way to cast a hyperbolic statement as a logical fallacy, because it doesn't involve a fallacious move from one idea to another.
6% picked this
Correct
draws too radical a conclusion
Why this is right
Hyperbolic = exaggerated = too radical Our author's rebuttal in the 2nd paragraph is saying, "it's too radical to say that positive evidence is worthless and negative evidence is essentially disproof. Sometimes negative evidence really just means that an auxiliary assumption was wrong, and the theory you're testing may still be accurate."
Skill tested: Meaning in Context · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
69% picked this
exaggerates the idea's relevance to
Out of Scope: irrelevant to theory
This answer is trying to entice people with the first word, the dictionary definition of "hyperbolize" -- exaggerates. But we have to validate every word in an answer, and our author is never saying that Popper's ideas about negative evidence are not as relevant as he claims they are to a specific theory. Popper's ideas aren't about any specific theory; they're about all potential theories.
14% picked this

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