Q12

[clarafok]

hello,

i'm totally stuck on #12! Where in the passage does it even talk about late-Renaissance scientific works written in Latin? I only spotted late Renaissance humanism in the second paragraph.

please help!

thanks

[giladedelman]

Thanks for posting.

The entire passage is concerned with the tendency for modern scholars to overlook late-Renaissance non-humanistic works written in Latin, including science. In the first paragraph, for example:

According to Binns, these language specialists ... leave works of theology and science ... to "specialists" in those fields, historians of science, for example, who lack philological training. The intellectual historian can find ample guidance when reading the Latin poetry of Milton, but little or none when confronting the more alien and difficult terminology, syntax, and content of the scientist Newton.

The issue is distilled even more clearly in the final paragraph:

No modern classicist is trained to deal with the range of problems posed by a difficult piece of Renaissance science; few students of English intellectual history are trained to read the sort of Latin in which such works were written.

So, the scholars who know Latin are unable to understand the science; and the scholars who understand the science are unable to decipher the Latin. Therefore, (C) is correct: "These works are difficult for modern scholars to analyze both because of the concepts they develop and the language in which they are written."

Does that answer your question?

[Nina]

I agree with that the entire passage was talking about the tendency of scholars to overlook Renaissance non-humanistic works written in Latin, but I when I was answering this question, I was too much distracted by the phrasing of question "late-Renaissance", since I only remembered that the whole passage was dealing with Renaissance, and the word "late-Renaissance" didn't appear until line 44 (in the esoteric concerns of late Renaissance humanism). Maybe I was over-thinking, but I'm wondering that does it make any difference when the author refers to the whole Renaissance period or the late-Renaissance period? and can this question also be phrased as "which one of the following concerning Renaissance scientific works written in Latin" instead of "late-Renaissance"?

Thanks a lot!

[db_8400]

Can someone explain why E is incorrect?

[maryadkins]

I'm not sure where we would get support for (E)—where does it suggest that scientific works were written by continental writers? If you have a term like "continental," you definitely want direct support for it in the passage. Also, where do we get support that it would have reached English intellectuals only in English? The passage tells us that English intellectuals were educated in Latin (lines 38-42).

As for the others:

(A) is contradicted by the passage.

(B) is also contradicted. They HAVE been translated.

and (D) is simply not supported by info. in the passage.

Hope this helps!