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READING PASSAGE 6
This is a Humanities reading passage.
The believer perceives herself to be in an entirely unique
position. She senses, or even knows, that there are aspects
of her religious life which cannot be apprehended by the
social sciences. Where does the anthropologist account for
the believer's soul? How does the historian deal with God's
determination of events in the believer's community? Can
the sociologist explain why congregants flock to their place
of worship?
We suspect that the believer does not stand alone in her
questioning of the adequacy of the social scientific method
as a mode of exposition. In other fields, we find glimmers
of similar doubt, parallels to the believer's concern that
the social scientific approach to her religion will overlook
its essence. The geographer uses the tools of the social
sciences in his investigation of a city. He may act as economist,
ethnographer, demographer, historian, urban planner, and
archivist in his endeavor to comprehend the city in its
fullness. And yet the citizen who examines his findings
may well charge that he has not accounted for the pulse
of the city. Likewise, even after his biography, education,
medical background have been considered, even after the
depths of his dreams and his chemical make-up have been
plumbed, the client may still doubt that his psychologist
has elucidated his self. In each of these cases, the object
of the study perceives a limitation to the method by which
the area in which he or she has a vested interest is explored.
The common understanding of the believer, the citizen and
the client -- who are all, as the objects of these studies,
personally vested in their respective results -- is that
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So the common
question they raise is: Can the social sciences ever account
for the whole? Or are they destined to remain confined to
a consideration of the parts?
When the social sciences model themselves too closely on
the natural sciences, when they quantify, reify, dissect
and inspect, they will be unable to account for the essence
of human experience. There are two reasons for this incapacity.
First, utter objectivity about the human enterprise is an
impossibility. This objection is connected to one occasionally
leveled against the natural sciences, and the social ones
as well: that objectivity period is impossible. Every act
of inclusion comprises one of exclusion; every theory pursued
marks an election against pursuing another. Further, the
scientist, because she is human, cannot help but bring some
subjective element of her own personal, cultural or social
world to her ostensibly objective investigation. So we must
keep in mind always the inherent impossibility of objectivity.
More than this, however, we must be mindful of another
aspect of the peculiar relation of objectivity and human
experience. Wilhelm Dilthey, a philosopher of experience,
explains that "experience here is not of phenomena
of objects, like desks or chairs; it is the existence of
human subjects within a temporal order that cannot itself
be objectified the way objective data can, because one can
never stand outside of temporality and watch it go by."
The natural sciences advocate a view from nowhere, an utter
objectivity whereby the scientist strives to divorce herself
entirely from her world as she investigates her subject.
The social scientist, however, is always viewing his subject
from somewhere, whether from a historical moment, a spatial
location, or an ideological stance. As a human being, he
can never truly step back from human experience in order
to evaluate it. The second reason that a social science
model based in the natural sciences will not fully apprehend
the whole of human experience is that the natural sciences
are not concerned with meaning. A social scientific approach
modeled too closely on the natural sciences runs the risk
of posing a partial set of questions. The full scope of
human experience cannot be grasped by simply asking who,
what, where, when and how. Issues of meaning, experience,
essence can only be arrived at when we ask Why. The theologian
or religionist would argue that only from the believer's
perspective can the question of why be honestly posed and
properly answered.
Question 1
The author employs all of the following techniques
EXCEPT:
A a hyperbole
B a rhetorical question
C an example
D a generalization
E an analogy
Question 2
The author cites all of the following as examples
of the social sciences EXCEPT:
A anthropology
B sociology
C history
D psychology
E philosophy
Question 3
According to the author, complete objectivity is:
A impossible, because the researcher can never fully remove
herself from her research
B unlikely, because the observer is inherently interested
in what she researches
C tenable, if the observer endeavors to divorce herself
from her subject of study
D possible, if the observer endeavors to divorce herself
from her own personal experience
E frequently attained, but only by researchers in the natural
sciences
Question 4
Who, according to the author of this passage, is
most qualified to explicate the religious life?
A the theologian
B the psychologist
C the believer
D the philosopher
E the religionist
Question 5
The primary topic of the passage is which of the
following?
A The varieties of religious belief
B The impossibility of accounting for human experience objectively
C The mutual exclusivity of faith and science
D The danger of objectifying religious conviction
E The clash between subjective experience and objective
data
ANSWERS and EXPLANATIONS
1. A
The author does not use a hyperbole -- a figure of speech
in which the expression is an evident exaggeration of the
meaning intended to be conveyed -- in his essay at all.
2. E
The author does mention a philosopher -- Wilhelm Dilthey
-- in his essay, but he does not use philosophy as an example
of a social science. In fact, most people would categorize
philosophy as one of the humanities, not as a social science.
But even if you knew that, you would still have had to make
sure that the text backed up your prior knowledge.
3. A
This is a concern the author addresses in a number of ways,
but the view is most succinctly expressed in the third paragraph,
when the author asserts: the scientist, because she is human,
cannot help but bring some subjective element of her own
personal, cultural or social world to her ostensibly objective
investigation.
4. C
In the last sentence of the piece, the author writes: The
theologian or religionist would argue that only from the
believer's perspective can the question of why be honestly
posed and properly answered.
5. B
The concern of the passage is to determine whether or not
-- and by what means -- we can measure or objectify human
experience.
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