CAT 2025 Question Paper | VARC Slot 2

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The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Different sciences exhibit different science cultures and practices. For example, in astronomy, observation – until what is today called the new astronomy – had always been limited to what could be seen within the limits of optical light. Indeed, until early modernity the limits to optical light were also limits of what humans could themselves see within their limited and relative perceptual spectrum of human vision. With early modernity and the invention of lensed optical instruments – telescopes – astronomers could begin to observe phenomena never seen before. Magnification and resolution began to allow what was previously imperceptible to be perceived – but within the familiar limits of optical vision. Galileo, having learned of the Dutch invention of a telescope by Hans Lippershey, went on to build some hundred of his own, improving from the Dutch 3x to nearly 30x telescopes – which turn out to be the limit of magnificational power without chromatic distortion. And it was with his own telescopes that he made the observations launching early modern astronomy (phases of Venus, satellites of Jupiter, etc.). Isaac Newton’s later improvement with reflecting telescopes expanded upon the magnificational-resolution capacity of optical observation; and, from Newton to the twentieth century, improvement continued on to the later very large array of light telescopes today – following the usual technological trajectory of “more-is-better” but still remaining within the limits of the light spectrum. Today’s astronomy has now had the benefit of some four centuries of optical telescopy. The “new astronomy,” however, opens the full known electromagnetic spectrum to observation, beginning with the accidental discovery of radio astronomy early in the twentieth century, and leading today to the diverse variety of EMS telescopes which can explore the range from gamma to radio waves. Thus, astronomy, now outfitted with new instruments, “smart” adaptive optics, very large arrays, etc., illustrates one style of instrumentally embodied science – a technoscience. Of course astronomy, with the very recent exceptions of probes to solar system bodies (Moon, Mars, Venus, asteroids), remains largely a “receptive” science, dependent upon instrumentation which can detect and receive emissions.

Contemporary biology displays a quite different instrument array and, according to Evelyn Fox-Keller, also a different scientific culture. She cites her own experience, coming from mathematical physics into microbiology, and takes account of the distinctive instrumental culture in her Making Sense of Life (2002). Here, particularly with the development of biotechnology, instrumentation is far more interventional than in the astronomy case. Microscopic instrumentation can be and often is interventional in style: “gene-splicing” and other techniques of biotechnology, while still in their infancy, are clearly part of the interventional trajectory of biological instrumentation. Yet, in both disciplines, the sciences involved are today highly instrumentalized and could not progress successfully without constant improvements upon the respective instrumental trajectories. So, minimalistically, one may conclude that the sciences are technologically, instrumentally embodied. But the styles of embodiment differ, and perhaps the last of the scientific disciplines to move into such technical embodiment is mathematics, which only contemporarily has come to rely more and more upon the computational machinery now in common use.

Question 20 : None of the following statements, if true, contradicts the arguments in the passage EXCEPT:

Explanatory Answer

 'None of the statements, if true, contradicts the arguments in the passage, except...' is the same as 'Which of the following, if true, contradicts the arguments in the passage?'
Consider option 1. According to the passage, in the times of Galileo and Newton, instruments for observation were just about beginning to be developed. So, option 1, if true, does not contradict the arguments of the passage.
Look at option 2. This option implies that mathematics did not have a scientific culture before and is only now developing this culture due to the use of computational machinery. This is clearly incorrect. The passage categorically declares mathematics as a scientific discipline (refer to the last line). So, option 2 is the answer choice we are looking for.
Option 3, if true, does not contradict the contents of the passage. Just like in one scientific field, in another scientific field too, instruments have been designed to move beyond the visible spectrum.
Option 4, too, if true does not contradict the arguments of the passage in any way.

The question is " None of the following statements, if true, contradicts the arguments in the passage EXCEPT: "

Hence, the answer is 'because of the relatively recent entry of computational machinery in mathematics, the field is only now beginning to develop a scientific culture.'

Choice 2 is the correct answer.

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