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Apes are our friends

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by nasir » Tue May 24, 2011 10:29 am
That was hard for me
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by sayanchakravarty » Thu May 26, 2011 4:07 am
E. As There's no 'religious' reference in the excerpt
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by sayanchakravarty » Thu May 26, 2011 4:12 am
OMG! E is incorrect. A it is.
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by prakhag » Mon Jun 20, 2011 8:40 pm
I've a doubt with option C.

Third paragraph talks about scientists predating Darwin accepted a "missing link" between humans and apes. Can this "missing link" be generalized to humans and apes having common ancestors?
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by tabsang » Mon Jun 27, 2011 6:50 am
It came down to choosing between A and E for me. I also correlated "creationist" to religious doctrine but failed to find the scientific reference (Chomsky=linguist+philosopher for me :)).

But I have a question for Dana. Dana, does the GMAT really test the taker's knowledge pertaining to specifics such as "creationist"(A concept of christianity)? Do let me know as it will help me increase the sphere of my prep.

Great passage and question nonetheless. Kudos.
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by Michelleleigha » Tue Jul 05, 2011 12:51 pm
Testimony to this tendency is that while the general population is inclined to believe that human abilities are the product of divine intervention or even, as some think, intervention from outer space, many are unwilling to accept.....Then talks about Carl Jung and Noam Chomsky's theory which would knock out E for me.

Leaving me with A, it is never really stated that there is no essential difference between human and animal intelligence, in fact I think she argues that it paragraph 1.
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by MaxK » Fri Jul 08, 2011 10:09 am
I still feel that E is the more logical answer.

The reason against A is that it is the central idea of the passage and the differences between adjectives like "essential", "qualitative" and "quantitative" don't matter against the stronger candidate that is E.

I am betting on E because the author is in no way trying to argue that scientific theories sometimes agree with fundamental religious doctrines. He simply mentions the fact about Noam Chomsky's theory and creationism in an attempt to prove that mankind still favours creationist theories when compared to scientific evolutionary theories. That's all. He is NOT arguing in favour of (E)

Are we simply trying to push A as the right answer because we think the question is more difficult than it looks to be? Even is the answer key says A, I will stick the "E" on the GMAT.

I would appreciate other people's opinions on this.
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by jonathan123456 » Sat Jul 09, 2011 11:09 am
wow. awesome question. I could have never judged "creationist view" is religious view :roll:
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by snehadas » Sat Jul 09, 2011 8:54 pm
Tricky one!! I chose E initially..
Then I read Dana's explanation, and yes A makes sense..
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by emf_jay » Wed Jul 13, 2011 1:26 am
thanks for answer
ready for 750 score .... !!!
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by olegpoi » Fri Jul 29, 2011 11:50 am
Looks like E
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by jonathan123456 » Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:07 am
wow, awesome question. It took me 6 minutes to read the para and like some other people marked E.
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by Deependra1 » Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:12 am
ANSWER: E
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by saketk » Thu Aug 25, 2011 9:48 am
Whoosh! This is a long passage... I was also stuck between option A and Option E. Though it was tough to eliminate option E, so I went to analyse option A first.

To me the word (in bold) stands out... " there is no essential difference between human and animal intelligence" -- The author never said that there is no essential difference. Infact, the author is trying to argue about the missing link between Apes and Humans and describes two viewpoints 'evolutionary perspective' and the 'Traditional perspective'. The mention of 'Missing Link' to me means that there is a difference between the human and animal intelligence which the author is talking about...
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by hortensia lobe » Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:12 pm
I think the answer is A.
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