PrepTest 131

Incorrect. The stimulus does establish that the past is too complex to be contained in a theoretical framework, but that's a far cry from saying that there is "no benefit ever" in using one. Maybe simplifying the past can be helpful in some cases.

Incorrect. While there's reason to believe that a theoretical framework has shortcomings when used in history, the stimulus never mentions usefulness in other fields, so this extreme comparison ("any other discipline") is too strong and out of scope.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Argument Completion

Stimulus Summary:
Some argue for the use of theoretical frameworks in history, but those frameworks can't capture all of the past's complexity, so __________.

Answer Anticipation:
The author of this argument pivots away from an approach advocated by others to raise a shortcoming of that approach—it fails to capture something's complexity. So the author is building towards a critical conclusion towards this practice.

Is the premise enough to reach a conclusion that theoretical frameworks shouldn't be used? Not necessarily—it's possible that they're useful as long as you're aware of their shortcomings. However, the author absolutely believes that some of history's complexity will be missed by historical analysis done through a theoretical framework, so the correct answer will probably be more in that area.

Answer Explanation:
While this answer uses strong language, it's actually quite weak—it states that a theoretical framework will miss some of history's complexity. That more or less reflects the preceding premise, so it serves as a great completion to this argument.

Key Takeaway:
The stimulus in this question didn't feature very extreme language, but many of the answer choices did. Despite these answers being thematically related to the argument being made, that strong language was enough for us to quickly eliminate a couple answers that may otherwise have been difficult to get rid of ((A), (E))—in Argument Completion questions, the correct answer shouldn't be stronger than the stimulus!

Incorrect. The argument is about the value of theoretical frameworks in history, not the people arguing in favor of using them, so this answer is out of scope.

Incorrect. First, the author thinks that theoretical frameworks can't capture all of history's complexity, so presumably she'd think there is a difference between other approaches that can better handle history's complexity. Second, "no difference" is an extreme statement that will almost never be supported—even if there's no significant or relevant difference, there's almost always some difference between different things.