Question

Read the passage and answer the question that follows.

The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle, or mere idle curiosity, even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced every day with a string of answerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is mainly what a university is for. Some of the questions that scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires of one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question, he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility. But to you, who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way a mountain climber wants to climb a mountain simply because it is there. Similarly, a historian, when asked by outsiders why he studies history, may come out with an argument that he has learnt to repeat on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler: something happened, and he would like to know what. All this does not mean that the answers which scholars find to their questions have no consequences. They may have enormous consequences, but these seldom form the reason for asking the question or pursuing the answers. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for the sake of the consequences, as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary function of the scholar, for the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.

Q. Common people consider some of the questions asked by scholars as unimportant

• A. since they are not worth asking or answering
• B. because the question is related to new machines and gadgets
• C. because the common man doesn't understand questions without years of explanations
• D. scholars ask very minute, specialized questions beyond the comprehension of the common man

Hint:

Find the sentence right after the claim in the question stem; the reason usually follows immediately in the passage.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

The question asks for the reason common people see some scholarly questions as unimportant, not just a restatement that they are unimportant. Go back to the line in the passage that gives the actual reason and check each option against it.

1. Since they are not worth asking or answering: This just repeats the idea in the question stem. It doesn't explain why the world thinks that. A restatement is not a reason, so this option does not answer the question being asked.
2. Because the question is related to new machines and gadgets: The passage mentions machines and gadgets only when a scientist gives the world a false, simplified reason for his research. It has nothing to do with why the public finds some questions unimportant.
3. Because the common man doesn't understand questions without years of explanations: This is close, since the passage does say the questions need years of explanation. But it leaves out the actual root cause given in the text, which is that the questions are too minute and specialized in the first place.
4. Scholars ask very minute, specialized questions beyond the comprehension of the common man: The passage says plainly, "They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation." This option captures both parts of that sentence, the specialization of the questions and the fact that they sit beyond ordinary comprehension.

Option 4 is the fullest and most accurate match for the passage's own explanation, so it is the correct answer.

Let's summarize:

• The passage explains that scholars' questions are dismissed because they are too narrow and technical for a layperson to grasp without long study.
• An option that only restates the question, or picks a minor detail like gadgets, does not count as the reason.

The correct option is that scholars ask very minute, specialized questions beyond the comprehension of the common man.