Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Medium

PT150 S3 Q25 ExplanationEssayist writing in 2012: At its onset

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsPrinciple-Strengthen

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Stimulus

Essayist writing in 2012: At its onset, a new medium is limited to carrying content from the old medium it replaces. We are in that phase with e-books—today’s e-books take their content from print books. Thus it is too early to it has not yet taken its ultimate form.

What this question is testing

Principle-Strengthen

Conclusion

The essayist says it's too early to figure out what the e-book really is, as a medium.

Evidence

New media always start by carrying content from the medium they're replacing. E-books today are basically print books in digital form — same content, new container. So they haven't evolved into their final form yet.

Evaluate

The leap is: "the e-book hasn't taken its final form" to "we can't yet understand it." For that to land, we need a rule that says you can't understand a medium until its content has evolved past the borrowed-content stage. Without that rule, the argument doesn't connect.

Goal

Find a principle that says understanding a medium requires watching its content evolve.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
25.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify

Answer choices, explained

  1. Bad Evidence Match6% picked this

    A medium cannot be fully understood without first understanding the media that

    This says you must understand the prior media before understanding a new one. The argument isn't about needing to understand print books before understanding e-books — and the essayist clearly thinks we already know enough about print books. The argument's gap is about the new medium's content evolution, not about prerequisite understanding of prior media.

  2. Bad Evidence Match3% picked this

    No electronic medium can resemble a print medium more than it resembles

    This is a claim about how electronic media should resemble other electronic media. The argument doesn't classify e-books by "electronic" vs. "print" similarity — it talks about content evolution. Even granting this principle, it wouldn't bridge from "content not yet evolved" to "can't yet be understood."

  3. Bad Evidence Match7% picked this

    The ultimate form that a medium will take depends on

    This is about what determines a medium's ultimate form (technology). The argument needs a principle about understanding the medium — what's required for someone to understand it. A claim about what shapes the ultimate form doesn't bridge to a claim about understanding.

  4. Correct78% picked this

    A medium cannot be understood without observing the evolution of

    Why this is right

    This is the bridge the argument needs. If a medium can't be understood without observing its content evolve, then for the e-book — which is still in the early phase of borrowed content from print books — the necessary content evolution hasn't happened yet. Therefore the e-book can't yet be understood. The principle takes us directly from the evidence (content hasn't evolved past borrowing) to the conclusion (it's too early to understand).

    Skill tested: Principle-Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

  5. Bad Evidence Match6% picked this

    One medium can replace another only if it can represent richer and

    This is about when one medium can replace another — content richness/variety. The argument isn't about whether e-books can replace print books; it's about whether we can yet understand e-books as a medium. Different topic.

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