Explanation for A

I've been asking myself this question for like half an hour now, so I may as well give this thread a crack. First off, we can easily eliminate answers (B) through (D), as they are clearly not supported by the passage. This brings us to (A) vs. (E), which I had a hard time choosing between. I totally agree with you; (A) isn't strong enough for me to feel confident choosing it and moving on. So I guess we can start with why (E) is wrong. (E) says that the author of passage A dismisses the ideas he discusses, whereas the author of passage B takes them more seriously. The only potential evidence I could see for this claim is that while the author of passage A ends up dismissing Whorf's hypothesis entirely, the author of passage B ends by saying that recent research either proves his ideas to be true, makes a neutral stance more likely, or disproves them. However, both passages spend a great deal of time dismissing Whorf's ideas, as evidenced by the whole of passage A and all the way until the middle of the second paragraph for passage B (author B even admits that recent research disproves Whorf's hypothesis). Because both passages are overall dismissive of Whorf, I see why this couldn't be the correct answer. Additionally, this is a tone question, so the correct answer is likely to be centered around the tone of both passages. To me, nothing about the tone of either passage indicates a lack of seriousness. (A) seems like the winner by process of elimination – passage A is written for a more general audience and passage B is written for a more academic one. However, it's worth noting that passage A talks about Whorf's errors as a whole, whereas passage B narrows in on Whorf's hypothesis concerning numerical conceptual understanding. Perhaps the more general scope of Passage A implies that it is written for a more general audience than passage B. Hope this helped! Writing out why the wrong answer is wrong and why the right answer is right definitely help me learn!

This was helpful to me, thanks!

I believe the problem in answer choice E is actually the word "dismiss". Although passage A does outright reject Whorf, it makes a case for this rejection. That is different than simply dismissing it as the word "dismiss" seems to imply a flippant disregard or a refusal to deal with an utterly absurd hypothesis.