Section 2Time - 30 minutes

24 Questions

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Q2.

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Taken from “Master of many trades” by Robert Twigger I. Our hunch that it’s easier to learn when you’re young isn’t completely

wrong, or at least it has a real basis in neurology. However, the pessimistic assumption that learning somehow ‘stops’ when you leave school or university or hit thirty is at odds with the evidence. It appears that a great deal depends on the nucleus basalis, located in the basal forebrain. Among other things, this bit of the brain produces significant amounts of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that regulates the rate at which new connections are made between brain cells. This in turn dictates how readily we form memories of various kinds, and how strongly we retain them. When the nucleus basalis is ‘switched on’, acetylcholine flows and new connections occur. When it is switched off, we make far fewer new connections. 

II. Between birth and the age of ten or eleven, the nucleus basalis is permanently ‘switched on’. It contains an abundance of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, and this means new connections are being made all the time. Typically this means that a child will be learning almost all the time — if they see or hear something once they

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remember it. But as we progress towards the later teenage years the brain becomes more selective. From research into the way stroke victims recover lost skills it has been observed that the nucleus basalis only switches on when one of three conditions occur: a novel situation, a shock, or intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application.

Q4. A neurotransmitter is:a. a chemical in the brainb. a device that measures the rate at which connections are made between brain cellsc. a part of the brain that controls the functioning of the nucleus basalisd. a process of transmitting information

Q5. The purpose of this passage is to:a. explain how learning occurs due to chemical activity in the brainb. show that people can keep learning throughout their livesc. show that we have no control over our brain’s ability to learnd. explain the workings of the nucleus basalis

Taken from “Poetry Isn’t as Useless as a Lot of Poets Say It Is” by Noah Berlatsky

I. Poetry is useless.II. That's the prevailing sentiment in our culture, as far as I can tell.

CEOs and lawyers rule the world. Policemen protect property and keep the peace and provide material for television dramas. Athletes and rock stars and movie stars make tons of money and provide material for gossip columns. But poets? Who cares? "It is difficult to imagine a world without movies, plays, novels and music, but a world without poems doesn't have to be imagined," as Newsweek said way back in 2003, when a large gift to Poetry magazine was supposed to change the face of poetry but, unsurprisingly, didn't. A 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that about 14 percent of the people in the U.S. read poetry, which seems generous. To compare poetry to other art/entertainment genres on Google Trends is to see the obvious. Poetry doesn't move public conversation; its only use, the thinking goes, is to give some handful of people tenure so they can spend their days in the ivory tower endlessly recycling their unentertaining irrelevance.

Q6. In the first paragraph, why does the author mention CEOs, lawyers, policemen, athletes, rock stars and movie stars?a. to provide examples of professionals who are more useful to society than poets

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b. to show that many professions seem more relevant in our culture than writing poetryc. to show that poetry is less interesting than most other professionsd. to explain why such few people become poets

Q7. According to the passage, which of the following is true for poetry?a. it does not attract any readersb. a world without it is hard to imaginec. it provides employment for academicsd. people should be discouraged from writing it

From “Crops, Towns, Governments” by James C.ScottI. It’s a good bet a culture is in trouble when its best-known intellectuals

start ransacking the cultural inventory of its ancestors and its contemporary inferiors for tips on how to live. The malaise is all the more remarkable when the culture in question is the modern American variant of Enlightenment rationalism and progress, a creed not known for self-doubt or failures of nerve. The deeper the trouble, the more we are seen to have lost our way, the further we must go spatially and temporally to find the cultural models that will help us. In the stronger versions of this quest, there is either a place – a Shangri-la – or a time, a Golden Age, that promises to reset our compass to true north. Anthropology and history implicitly promise to provide such models. Anthropology can show us radically different and satisfying forms of human affiliation and co-operation that do not depend on the nuclear family or inherited wealth. History can show that the social and political arrangements we take for granted are the contingent result of a unique historical conjuncture.

II. Jared Diamond, ornithologist, evolutionary biologist and geographer, is best known as the author of Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, one of the most influential accounts of how most of us came to live in places with huge concentrations of people, grain and domesticated animals, and how this helped create the world of massive inequalities and disparate life chances with which we now live. Diamond’s was not a simple, self-congratulatory ‘rise of the West’ story, telling how some peoples and cultures showed themselves to be essentially cleverer, braver or more rational than others. Instead, he demonstrated the importance of impersonal environmental forces: plants and herd animals amenable to domestication, pathogens, a favorable climate and geography that aided the rise of early states in the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean. These initial advantages were compounded by interstate competition in metallurgy for armaments and navigational

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devices. His argument was much praised for its bold and original synthesis, and much criticized by historians and anthropologists for reducing the arc of human history to a handful of environmental conditions. There was no denying, however, that Diamond’s simple quasi-Darwinian view of human selection was ‘good to think with’.  

 

Q8. According to paragraph 1, what do anthropology and history implicitly promise us?a. rationalism and progress that will lead to successb. insights that will help us out of the troubles we currently face c. new social and political arrangementsd. ideas that lead to self-doubt and failures of nerve

Q9. In the second paragraph, which of the following is not given as a reason for the rise of the west? 

a. plant and herd animals amenable to domestication 

b. pathogens 

c. clever, braver and more rational people 

d. a favorable climate and geography 

From “Democracy’s Dual Dangers” by David Runcimanhttp://chronicle.com/article/Democracys-Dual-Dangers/142971/ 

I. American democracy is going through one of its periodic bouts of self-loathing. The public disapproves of the performance of all the branches of government, even the Supreme Court. Approval ratings for Congress are so low it is tempting to wonder about the sanity of the small number of people who still express confidence in it. The recent shutdown in Washington provoked a furious round of critical commentary from academics and pundits across the political spectrum. There is near unanimity: This is no way to run a government.

II. These recent travails have also provided plenty of material for commentators who see in every setback evidence of a broader decline. The historian Niall Ferguson has been predicting the unwinding of American power and influence for more than a decade. In the last few years, his warnings have gathered pace: Every time America's politicians lumber into another hole, Ferguson says I told you so. Even onetime optimists like Thomas Friedman, of The New York Times, are undergoing a crisis of faith.

III. Yet there is nothing new about this outburst of disgust with the workings of democracy. Nor is it distinctively American. Europeans (with the possible exception of Germans) are just as disenchanted with their elected politicians. Lamenting the failings of democracy is a permanent feature of democratic life, one that persists through governmental crises and successes alike.

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IV. There is no decade from the past century when it is not possible to find an extended debate among commentators and intellectuals in the democratic West about the inadequacies of democratic politics. This is not true of only those decades when Western democracy was clearly on the ropes, like the 1930s, when it was menaced by fascism, or the 1970s, when it was threatened by inflation and oil shock. It's also true of the prosperous and relatively stable decades as well. In the 1920s, Walter Lippmann led the charge, arguing that democratic publics were far too ill-informed and inattentive to manage their own affairs. In the 1950s, academics worried about the banality and exhaustion of democratic life. Daniel Bell took a positive stance with his claims about the end of ideology, but for the most part democracy was treated as a cumbersome, careless system of government, in permanent danger of being outwitted by the Soviets.

Q10. According to the passage, which of the following is true of democracy?a. The public loathes democracy but academics understand its inherent usefulness.b. Democracy is criticized during difficult times but adored when a society is prosperous.c. Democratic societies always criticize and find flaws with their system of government.d. Americans are more prone to attacking democracy than Europeans.

Q11. What is the author’s tone in this passage?a. Defensiveb. Combativec. Condescendingd. Instructive

Q12. In the last paragraph, the word “banality” could best be replaced with:a. Simplicityb. Stalenessc. Complicationd. Irrelevance

From “Crimes Against Humanities” by Leon WeiseltierI. The question of the place of science in knowledge, and in society, and

in life, is not a scientific question. Science confers no special authority, it confers no authority at all, for the attempt to answer a nonscientific question. It is not for science to say whether science belongs in morality and politics and art. Those are philosophical matters, and science is not philosophy, even if philosophy has since its beginnings been receptive to science. Nor does science confer any license to extend its categories and its methods beyond its own

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realms, whose contours are of course a matter of debate. The credibility of physicists and biologists and economists on the subject of the meaning of life—what used to be called the ultimate verities, secularly or religiously constructed—cannot be owed to their work in physics and biology and economics, however distinguished it is. The extrapolation of larger ideas about life from the procedures and the conclusions of various sciences is quite common, but it is not in itself justified; and its justification cannot be made on internally scientific grounds, at least if the intellectual situation is not to be rigged. Science does come with a worldview, but there remains the question of whether it can suffice for the entirety of a human worldview. To have a worldview, Musil once remarked, you must have a view of the world. That is, of the whole of the world. But the reach of the scientific standpoint may not be as considerable or as comprehensive as some of its defenders maintain.

II. None of these strictures about the limitations of science, about its position in nonscientific or extra-scientific contexts, in any way impugns the integrity or the legitimacy or the necessity or the beauty of science. Science is a regular source of awe and betterment. No humanist in his right mind would believe otherwise. No humanist in his right mind would believe otherwise. Science is plainly owed this much support, this much reverence. This much—but no more. In recent years, however, this much has been too little for certain scientists and certain scientizers, or propagandists for science as a sufficient approach to the natural universe and the human universe. In a world increasingly organized around the dazzling new breakthroughs in science and technology, they feel oddly besieged.

III. They claim that science is under attack, and from two sides. The first is the fundamentalist strain of Christianity, which does indeed deny the truth of certain proven scientific findings and more generally prefers the subjective gains of personal rapture to the objective gains of scientific method. Against this line of attack, even those who are skeptical about the scientizing enterprise must stand with the scientists, though it is important to point out that the errors of religious fundamentalism must not be mistaken for the errors of religion. Too many of the defenders of science, and the noisy “new atheists,” shabbily believe that they can refute religion by pointing to its more outlandish manifestations. Only a small minority of believers in any of the scriptural religions, for example, have ever taken scripture literally. When they read, most believers, like most nonbelievers, interpret. When the Bible declares that the world was created in seven days, it broaches the question of what a day might mean. When the Bible declares that God has an arm and a nose, it broaches the question of what an arm and a nose might mean. Since the universe is 13.8 billion years old, a day cannot mean 24 hours, at

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least not for the intellectually serious believer; and if God exists, which is for philosophy to determine, this arm and this nose cannot refer to God, because that would be stupid.

IV. Interpretation is what ensues when a literal meaning conflicts with what is known to be true from other sources of knowledge. As the ancient rabbis taught, accept the truth from whoever utters it. Religious people, or many of them, are not idiots. They have always availed themselves of many sources of knowledge. They know about philosophical argument and figurative language. Medieval and modern religious thinking often relied upon the science of its day. Rationalist currents flourished alongside anti-rationalist currents, and sometimes became the theological norm. What was Jewish and Christian and Muslim theology without Aristotle? When a dissonance was experienced, the dissonance was honestly explored. So science must be defended against nonsense, but not every disagreement with science, or with the scientific worldview, is nonsense. The alternative to obscurantism is not that science be all there is.

V. The second line of attack to which the scientizers claim to have fallen victim comes from the humanities. This is a little startling, since it is the humanities that are declining in America, not least as a result of the exaggerated glamour of science. But some scientists and some scientizers feel prickly and self-pitying about the humanistic insistence that there is more to the world than science can disclose. It is not enough for them that the humanities recognize and respect the sciences; they need the humanities to submit to the sciences, and be subsumed by them. The idea of the autonomy of the humanities, the notion that thought, action, experience, and art exceed the confines of scientific understanding, fills them with a profound anxiety. It throws their totalizing mentality into crisis. And so they respond with a strange mixture of defensiveness and aggression. As people used to say about the Soviet Union, they expand because they feel encircled.

 Q13. What does the author say about scientists engaged with the ultimate verities? a. They must be careful when using scientific methods in this pursuit b. Their credibility to do so must depend on their accomplishments in scientific endeavors c. They must do so by extrapolating larger ideas from procedures and conclusions of science  d. Their work as scientists does not qualify them to make claims about such things 

Q14. Which proposition has been considered by certain scientists as an insufficient approach to the natural universe and the human universe?

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 a. Progress depends on dazzling new breakthroughs in science and technology b. Subjective gains of personal rapture are preferable to objective gains of scientific method c. Science is a worthy pursuit but is not suited to certain areas of inquiry d. Religion is a valid source of knowledge in the absence of scientific proof 

Q15. Which of the following represents the author’s views about religion? a. Science is under attack from religious groups b. Scientists’ denial of religion is simplistic c. The errors of religion are preferable to the errors of science d. The errors of science are preferable to the errors of religion

 Q16. What does the author say about interpretation of religious texts? a. It is not appropriate for scientists to engage in such activities b. It is used by religious groups to deny the truth of proven scientific findings c. It shows that religious groups are open to other narratives d. It is an easy way out when literal meaning conflicts with what is known to be true 

Q17. The author implies that science and religion are: a. Incompatible as ways of understanding the world b. Both equally valid and equally prone to errors c. Different areas of inquiry that should overlap d. Viable alternatives to obscurantism 

Q18. The author claims that the humanities: a. Have victimized the scientizers b. Are declining not as a result of the exaggerated glamour of science c. Exceed the confines of scientific understanding d. Are filled with profound anxiety because of the idea of their autonomy 

Q19. In the last paragraph, the Soviet Union serves as: a. A metaphor b. A simile c. A hyperbole d. None of the above 

Give the meanings of the following words as they are used in the passage: 

Q20.Verities

 Q21. Impugn

 Q22. Rapture

 Q23. Dissonance

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 Q24. Obscurantism

Answers:

1. C2. B3. C4. A5. B6. B7. C

8. B 9. C 10. C11. D12. B13. D14. C

15. B16. C17. D18. C19. A

 20. Verities: something that is true, as a principle, belief, idea, or statement: the eternal verities.

21. Impugn:to challenge as false (another's statements, motives, etc.); cast doubt upon.

22.Rapture: ecstatic joy or delight; the carrying of a person to another sphere of existence;

23. Dissonance: disagreement or incongruity; inharmonious or harsh sound; discord; cacophony. 

24. Obscurantism: deliberate obscurity or evasion of clarity; opposition to the spread of knowledge.

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