求教prep rc-6 David Allen研究的错误

dontwanna

Essay 6Colonial historian David Allen's intensive study of five communities in seventeenth-century Massachusetts is a model of meticulous scholarship on the detailed microcosmic level, and is convincing up to a point.  Allen suggests that much more coherence and direct continuity existed between English and colonial agricultural practices and administrative organization than other historians have suggested.  However, he overstates his case with the declaration that he has proved "the remarkable extent to which diversity in New England local institutions was directly imitative of regional differences in the mother country." Such an assertion ignores critical differences between seventeenth-century England and New England.  First, England was overcrowded and land-hungry; New England was sparsely populated and labor-hungry.  Second, England suffered the normal European rate of mortality; New England, especially in the first generation of English colonists, was virtually free from infectious diseases.  Third, England had an all-embracing state church; in New England membership in a church was restricted to the elect.  Fourth, a high proportion of English villagers lived under paternalistic resident squires; no such class existed in New England.  By narrowing his focus to village institutions and ignoring these critical differences, which studies by Greven, Demos, and Lockridge have shown to be so important, Allen has created a somewhat distorted picture of reality. Allen's work is a rather extreme example of the "country community" school ofseventeenth-century English history whose intemperate excesses in removing all national issues from the history of that period have been exposed by Professor Clive Holmes. What conclusion can be drawn, for example, from Allen's discovery that Puritan clergy who had come to the colonies from East Anglia were one-third to one half as likely to return to England by 1660 as were Puritan ministers from western and northern England?  We are not told in what way, if at all, this discovery illuminates historical understanding.  Studies of local history have enormously expanded our horizons, but it is a mistake for their authors to conclude that village institutions are all that mattered, simply because their functions are all that the records of village institutions reveal.

dontwanna

Question 19：
It can be inferred from the passage that the author of the passage considers Allen's "discovery" (see highlighted text) to be

(A) already known to earlier historians

(B) based on a logical fallacy

(C) improbable but nevertheless convincing

(D) an unexplained, isolated fact

(E) a new, insightful observation
正确 D 定位We are not told in what way, if at all, this discovery illuminates historical understanding.
错选B 当时对应的是

it is a mistake for their authors to conclude that village institutions are all that mattered, simply because their functions are all that the records of village institutions reveal.
这个不是逻辑错误吗？只因为...就片面得出... 的结论？

看20题考主旨题时，Question 20：The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

(A) substantiating a claim about a historical event

(B) reconciling two opposing ideas about a historical era

(C) disputing evidence a scholar uses to substantiate a claim about a historical event

(D) analyzing two approaches to scholarly research and evaluating their methodologies

(E) criticizing a particular study and the approach to historical scholarship it represents
正确选E，也是说criticizing a particular study and the approach

19题，B为什么不对呢？

dreamlollip

Okay, first off, this is a pretty tough question. The issue here is why was Allen wrong, or, what does the author of the passage things about Allen’s argument. You know that he thinks it’s wrong.

Why does he think it’s wrong? Because he bases it on a limited view of colonial experience.

That is, he looks at a very isolated instance.

Okay, so, does Allen have a LOGICAL FALLACY or does he have a LIMITED DATASET? I would argue that his logic is fine, it’s just that he was not looking at the entire picture.

Making a conclusion based on insufficient evidence is NOT a logical fallacy. It’s wrong, to be sure. But it’s not wrong because of false logic, it’s wrong because of false data. Those are very different (and very important distinctions for this test).

Finally, we see this “By narrowing his focus to village institutions and ignoring these critical differences,” This shows that the author KNOWS that Allen was not paying enough attention to his data. he was making a mistake of research. But not a mistake of logic. Logical fallacy would be something like: A → B , THUS B → A. You know that is not true (If I am Hungry Then My Stomach Hurts, Thus, If my Stomach Hurts then I am Hungry... TOTALLY not a good argument. Instead, you’d want to take the opposite referrent and say A → B, thus ~B → ~A.)

Hope this helps

yujunchening

题目的B选项是based on基于，错在这个discovery并不是基于逻辑错误，原句but it is a mistake for their authors to conclude that village institutions are all that mattered，这句话想表达discovery 使authors错误的得出结论，明显B选项意思不准确，=）