MCAT Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills Question 68: Answer and Explanation

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Question: 68

3. Which of the following statements, based on the passage, most accurately represents a relationship between the German anthropologists' views on natural science and those of Kant and Schelling?

  • A. The German anthropologists accepted Kant's view that science consists of deductions from necessary laws and rejected Schelling's belief that empiricism requires combining theological and natural knowledge.
  • B. The German anthropologists accepted Schelling's empiricist approach and rejected Kant's belief that science consists of deductions from mathematical laws.
  • C. The German anthropologists rejected Kant's inclusion of theological considerations within natural science and accepted Schelling's belief that human beings are mutable.
  • D. The German anthropologists rejected Kant's systematizing and accepted Schelling's empiricism.

Correct Answer: B

Explanation:

B This is an Inference question.

A: No. The first part of this choice is incorrect. The anthropologists rejected Kant's view that science consists of deductions from necessary laws (see end of paragraph 3).

B: Yes. Both parts of this choice are supported by the passage. The passage states in paragraph 4 that "it was in their empiricist approach to nature that anthropologists retained their allegiance to Schelling." In paragraph 3, the author writes that the anthropologists "would not have subscribed to the Kantian notion of science as the a priori deduction of mathematical laws. Indeed, anthropology was above all a science of the given facts, which Kant had rejected as a source of natural scientific knowledge."

C: No. This choice is accurate up until the very last word. However, it was the idea that "the facts teach that the races of humans and the species of animals are immutable" or unchangeable that the anthropologists accepted, rather than an idea that humans are mutable or changeable (an idea that Schelling did not, according to the passage, propose).

D: No. The first part of this choice is incorrect: "Anthropologists saw in the science of botany a model for their own antievolutionist synthesis of Kant's systematizing with Schelling's empiricism" (paragraph 5). Thus, they accepted rather than rejected Kant's systematizing.

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