Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 42 | 100 RCs for GMAT PDF Download

The author starts the passage by talking about human progress and then goes on to provide two opposing views of the same in the subsequent paragraphs spanning a period of 20 years.
(C) follows best from this and is the correct answer.
(A) The author does not ‘criticize’ the Biblical account anywhere in the passage.
(B) The author never argues that this concept was a myth.
(D) This is mentioned in the passage but is too specific to be the main purpose.

(E) Same as E.

The author mentions in the first few lines that the thinkers wanted to include the narrative of human progress as supreme. It was understood to be both a material and a moral process; not just changing our technologies but altering our instincts, and for the better. This makes option (D) correct.
(A) The passage never asserts this.
B) Extreme. While ‘man’ was given more importance, there is nothing in the passage to suggest that he was considered superior to god.
(C) The author never talks about ‘mastery over the world’.
(E) Bronowski doesn’t come until much later in the passage.

Students tend to get confused on this question because options (A), (B), and (C) all look good. (D) is a specific detail from the paragraph, so cannot be the answer and (E) is actually mentioned only in the fifth paragraph.
While answering questions that ask you for the ‘function’ of something, keep in mind that this function has to be from the point of view of the author of the passage. Now, did the author write the third paragraph to argue about something? Absolutely not—if anything, he would disagree with the third para, so (A) cannot be the answer.
Similarly, (B) cannot be the answer because, even though the third para does give the views of Bronowski, the question is not what the third para contains but rather why it contains what it contains. The correct answer has to be (C) because the reason the author wrote the third para was to provide a contrasting view to the cynicism in the second paragraph.

The first para states that the fathers of Enlightenment wanted to put man at the centre of the story instead of God, and then states that this contrasts with the Biblical account of time. Therefore, it can easily be inferred that the Biblical account of time put God at the centre of the story. Hence, (E) is the correct answer.
(A) This is Bronowski’s belief, and not the author’s.
(B) The author does not explicitly state his preferences anywhere.
(C) Extreme and not supported by the passage.
(D) While the passage does mention the European conquerors, it would be too much to conclude that they were in any way responsible for the cynicism surrounding the story of progress.