CAT Exam  >  CAT Notes  >  Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC)  >  CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1

CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1 | Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) PDF Download

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people. . .
The differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism," or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism" . . .
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.
A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don't acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.

Question for CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1
Try yourself:All of the following can be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:
View Solution

Question for CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1
Try yourself:All of the following are advanced by the author as reasons why non-geographers disregard geographic influences on human phenomena EXCEPT their:
View Solution

Question for CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1
Try yourself:The examples of the Inuit and Aboriginal Australians are offered in the passage to show:
View Solution

Question for CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1
Try yourself:The author criticises scholars who are not geographers for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
View Solution

The document CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1 | Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) is a part of the CAT Course Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC).
All you need of CAT at this link: CAT
163 videos|853 docs|126 tests
Related Searches

Extra Questions

,

past year papers

,

ppt

,

Summary

,

MCQs

,

CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1 | Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC)

,

study material

,

Exam

,

Important questions

,

Free

,

Objective type Questions

,

video lectures

,

shortcuts and tricks

,

Previous Year Questions with Solutions

,

CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1 | Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC)

,

CAT 2023 Reading Comprehension Questions - 1 | Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC)

,

Semester Notes

,

mock tests for examination

,

Sample Paper

,

Viva Questions

,

pdf

,

practice quizzes

;