LAST LSAT-TEST Exam Dumps

Because addictive drugs are physically harmful, their use by athletes is never justified. Purists, however, claim that taking massive doses of even such nonaddictive drugs as aspirin and vitamins before competing should also be prohibited because they are unnatural. This is ridiculous; almost everything in sports is unnatural, from high-tech running shoes to padded boxing gloves to highly-specialized bodybuilding machines. Yet, none of these is prohibited on the basis of its being unnatural. Furthermore, we should be attending to far more serious problems that plague modern sports and result in unnecessary deaths and injuries. Therefore, the use of nonaddictive drugs by athletes should not be prohibited.

Which one of the following can be inferred from the passage above?

A. The fact that something is unnatural is not a sufficient reason for banning it.

B. There is nothing unnatural about the use of nonaddictive drugs by athletes.

C. The use of addictive drugs by athletes should be prohibited because addictive drugs are unnatural.

D. Some of the unnecessary deaths and injuries in modern sports are caused by the use of addictive drugs by athletes.

E. The use of addictive drugs by athletes is a less serious problem than are unnecessary injuries.

One of the most vexing problems in historiography is dating an event when the usual sources offer conflicting chronologies of the event. Historians should attempt to minimize the number of competing sources, perhaps by eliminating the less credible ones. Once this is achieved and several sources are left, as often happens, historians may try, though on occasion unsuccessfully, to determine independently of the usual sources which date is more likely to be right.

Which one of the following inferences is most strongly supported by the information above?

A. We have no plausible chronology of most of the events for which attempts have been made by historians to determine the right date.

B. Some of the events for which there are conflicting chronologies and for which attempts have been made by historians to determine the right date cannot be dated reliably by historians.

C. Attaching a reliable date to any event requires determining which of several conflicting chronologies is most likely to be true.

D. Determining independently of the usual sources which of several conflicting chronologies is more likely to be right is an ineffective way of dating events.

E. The soundest approach to dating an event for which the usual sources give conflicting chronologies is to undermine the credibility of as many of these sources as possible.

Donna Haraway's Primate Visions is the most ambitious book on the history of science yet written from a feminist perspective, embracing not only the scientific construction of gender but also the interplay of race, class, and colonial and postcolonial culture with the "Western" construction of the very concept of nature itself. Primatology is a particularly apt vehicle for such themes because primates seem so much like ourselves that they provide ready material for scientists' conscious and unconscious projections of their beliefs about nature and culture.

Haraway's most radical departure is to challenge the traditional disjunction between the active knower (scientist/historian) and the passive object (nature/history). In Haraway's view, the desire to understand nature, whether in order to tame it or to preserve it as a place of wild innocence, is based on a troublingly masculinist and colonialist view of nature as an entity distinct from us and subject to our control. She argues that it is a view that is no longer politically, ecologically, or even scientifically viable. She proposes an approach that not only recognizes diverse human actors (scientists, government officials, laborers, science fiction writers) as contributing to our knowledge of nature, but that also recognizes the creatures usually subsumed under nature (such as primates) as active participants in creating that knowledge as well. Finally, she insists that the perspectives afforded by these different agents cannot be reduced to a

single, coherent reality ?there are necessarily only multiple, interlinked, partial realities.

This iconoclastic view is reflected in Haraway's unorthodox writing style. Haraway does not weave the many different elements of her work into one unified, overarching Story of Primatology; they remain distinct voices that will not succumb to a master narrative. This fragmented approach to historiography is familiar enough in historiographical theorizing but has rarely been put into practice by historians of science. It presents a complex alternative to traditional history, whether strictly narrative or narrative with emphasis on a causal argument. Haraway is equally innovative in the way she incorporates broad cultural issues into her analysis. Despite decades of rhetoric from historians of science about the need to unite issues deemed "internal" to science (scientific theory and practice) and those considered "external" to it (social issues, structures, and beliefs), that dichotomy has proven difficult to set aside. Haraway simply ignores it. The many readers in whom this separation is deeply ingrained may find her discussions of such popular sources as science fiction, movies, and television distracting, and her statements concerning such issues as nuclear war bewildering and digressive. To accept her approach one must shed a great many assumptions about what properly belongs to the study of science.

The passage suggests which one of the following about the traditional scientific approach to nature?

A. Scientists have traditionally preferred to tame nature rather than to preserve it.

B. Scientists have traditionally sought to counter the masculinist and colonialist aspects of Western culture.

C. Scientists have traditionally assumed that primates were more active participants in the creation of knowledge than were other forms of natural life.

D. Scientists have traditionally endeavored to conceal the role of government officials and laborers in the construction of scientific knowledge.

E. Scientists have traditionally regarded nature as something separate from themselves.