Which of the following statements about Voltaire’s Elements

Adam

Hi Olivia,
You shouldn't worry too much about this distinction. If the passage supports the answer, then it's probably correct. It is very very rare for an answer to be incorrect because it is stated and thus not inferred. The passage states that Voltaire's amateurism made a lot of people like his work.

We have to make the jump that having a lot of people like your work is an advantage to bringing science to the public :) I know this is a painfully obvious logical leap, but that's precisely why very few answers are eliminated because they are stated directly. There's almost always a logical leap from the passage to the answer, no matter how obvious that leap.

Aug 30, 2020 • Reply

Adam

Hi Jacob,

There are a couple of reasons we can infer that Voltaire would not have been able to understand the ideas without Madame du Châtelet.

The first is that we are told that the light that she reflects onto Voltaire represents the "light of truth." This indicates that Madame du Châtelet's work with Voltaire is not one of mere aesthetic collaboration, but has to do with the very content of Voltaire's work.

The second is that Voltaire "was neither a mathematician nor a physicist" and that he was a scientific amateur. Both of these statements point strongly to the notion that Voltaire would not have been able to understand Newton's ideas on his own.

Now, the answer choice does ask specifically about the frontispiece, but we are given more background info about Voltaire that supports C. Combined with this information, the frontispiece image strongly *implies* (it doesn't *prove*, but it does imply) that Voltaire needed help understanding Newton's work.

Jan 25, 2016 • Reply

av19994

Hi,

Doesn't the passage say that Newton's ideas were accessible to someone without a math/physics background? So it would not have mattered that Voltaire wasn't a mathematician or physicist.

Nov 4, 2017 • Reply

Adam

Hi,

First, the passage says that people who read Voltaire's book could understand Newton's ideas, not that anyone could understand Newton's ideas directly, without Voltaire's book.

Second, I've actually addressed this question above in reply to Jacob Elder; please see my comment, which concerns the specific wording of the question and the frontispiece of the book.

Nov 9, 2017 • Reply

Shashank Nijaguna

Hello,
About answer choice A, I do understand that Voltaire's literary stature helped him garner a large audience, but that is not the only reason, his literary stature along with him being an amateur and his indifference to the academic disputes of Newtonian ideas also helped.
So, generally do we go with the answer choices if it is true to an extent as well?

Jun 4, 2018 • Reply

David Recine

As long as none of the language in the answer choice indicates that a part of the truth is the *whole* truth, then yes--- you can go with an answer that mentions one true fact while not mentioning others.

On the other hand, if answer choice A had said "Voltaire's literary stature alone secured...", the answer would be wrong, because "alone" doesn't just leave out the other facts-- that word incorrectly indicates that there ARE no other facts.

Jun 4, 2018 • Reply