Q20

[chrisstepanian]

I clearly see why B is correct, but I was very tempted by C for some reason. Could you please explain what makes C wrong? The way I understood it, the whole point of the passage was to debunk the idea that the relationship between democracy and literacy was relevant in premodern society. Thanks.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yikes --- that's a mean "down to 2".

I'm surprised they would write two answers that are so similar for a purpose question. We have to focus on the difference:

Is Goody (and others like him) trying to understand ancient societies or trying to understand the relationships between ancient and contemporary societies?

Find line references to settle this question.

The first sentence is saying that [a certain approach] has not assisted our understanding of how such literacy altered an ancient society.

I find lines 14-16, pretty much the thesis statement, to be the most concrete way to decide:
"[this sort of confusion] is detrimental to understanding ancient politics"

Both times the author uses "understanding", the object of that verb is "ancient society" / "ancient politics". So (B) is a stronger match.

What's confusing here is that our author is saying "it is sketchy to USE contemporary society as a model for understanding what happened with ancient societies because THE RELATIONSHIP between the two is not nearly as analogous as some scholars pretend it is."

But what we're saying here is
certain approach = OBSERVING modern societies and ASSUMING AN ANALOGOUS RELATIONSHIP to ancient societies

is giving us a poor understanding of ancient societies.

So your brain (and mine) is just taking words from (C) and getting caught up in the fact that our author IS criticizing scholars for assuming an analogous relationship between ancient and contemporary. But what the scholars are attempting to understand is ANCIENT SOCIETY, not the relationship.

[phoebster21]

Yikes --- that's a mean "down to 2".

I'm surprised they would write two answers that are so similar for a purpose question. We have to focus on the difference:

Is Goody (and others like him) trying to understand ancient societies or trying to understand the relationships between ancient and contemporary societies?

Find line references to settle this question.

The first sentence is saying that [a certain approach] has not assisted our understanding of how such literacy altered an ancient society.

I find lines 14-16, pretty much the thesis statement, to be the most concrete way to decide:
"[this sort of confusion] is detrimental to understanding ancient politics"

Both times the author uses "understanding", the object of that verb is "ancient society" / "ancient politics". So (B) is a stronger match.

What's confusing here is that our author is saying "it is sketchy to USE contemporary society as a model for understanding what happened with ancient societies because THE RELATIONSHIP between the two is not nearly as analogous as some scholars pretend it is."

But what we're saying here is
certain approach = OBSERVING modern societies and ASSUMING AN ANALOGOUS RELATIONSHIP to ancient societies

is giving us a poor understanding of ancient societies.

So your brain (and mine) is just taking words from (C) and getting caught up in the fact that our author IS criticizing scholars for assuming an analogous relationship between ancient and contemporary. But what the scholars are attempting to understand is ANCIENT SOCIETY, not the relationship.

So if C had instead said something like, "present the disadvantages of a particular approach to understanding ancient societies via its relationship to contemporary societies" would that more properly address the passage's purpose?