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Direction: Answer the question, based on the following information. Indicate which of the statements given with that particular question, is consistent with the information given in the passage below.
A Holistic Viewpoint
It is now recognised by modern science that the universe at the subatomic level does not have solid material objects, but consists of only wavelike patterns which represent probabilities of interconnections between other interconnections, all of which together constitute an inseparable web of inter-relationships constituting the entire universe. Fritj of Capra, therefore, views the universe not as “an assemblage of independent parts” but as “a dynamic web of inter-related events” in which each part of the web determines the structure of the whole. Geoffrey Chew views such inter-penetrating and interdependent relationships in the universe in terms of a “bootstrap” theory which implies that all forces in the universe are inseparably linked together, every part affects every other part, and the whole world is held together so to say, by bootstraps. David Bohm refers to a holographic concept which implies not only that every part is connected with every other part within the whole but also that, in a sense, each part contains the whole. This, according to David Bohm, recognises the “Undivided wholeness” of the entire universe instead of the classical idea of the analysability of the world into separately and independently existent parts. Choose the appropriate option
Options
the holographic theory speaks of the exclusiveness of each part.
the world can be analysed into separate independent parts.
the classical idea recognizes the concept of wholeness.
the bootstrap theory speaks of interdependent relationships
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Solution
the bootstrap theory speaks of interdependent relationships
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Direction: The passage given below is followed by a set of question. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Johnson was deeply but not necessarily conventionally religious: he struggled within himself most of his life to sustain his belief in God in the face of enormous pressures, disappointments, and psychological calamities. On the surface, and in much of his work, he appeared to be an orthodox, conventional, conservative adherent of revealed religion, of the Church of England, but the conventional Anglican explanations for the existence of evil in the world failed to satisfy him, and in any case, his characteristic reluctance to believe without evidence, his fear of credulity, his dislike of mysteries, continually undermined his attempts to accept conventional beliefs. He was remarkable, privately, for his tolerance; maintaining that the differences between Christian sects (Protestants and Roman Catholics, for example) were trivial, and due primarily to political rather than religious differences.
His religious difficulties began at a very early age. His mother, when he was only three, told him of "a fine place filled with happiness called Heaven" and "a sad place, called Hell." Many years later he recalled that (as one might expect) this account did not impress him very deeply: it is significant, however, that he remembered it at all. After the age of nine, and through his adolescence, he stopped going to church. One part of him remained a skeptic for the rest of his life, and, as his private journals show, even after he had regained his faith he struggled continually (and privately) with fears, guilt, and disbelief: in "The Vanity of Human Wishes," written when he was forty, he returns to a traditional religious theme as well as a personal preoccupation and insists that we cannot find genuine or permanent happiness in this world and that we must therefore turn to religious belief and faith in the existence of a better world after death if we are to endure our existence here. It was a belief; however, which he himself had difficulty maintaining. The happiness derived from such belief was in any case a limited one, but the only alternative
to religious faith, as Johnson saw it, was a dull apathy, a stoical disengagement from life. He was troubled, too — a better word would be tormented — by a fear of death and by a deeper fear that he might in spite of his best efforts be so guilty, so sinful, that he merited damnation. And beneath that fear was another, even deeper — the fear that God might not exist at all, that death might bring annihilation, mere nothingness, the loss of personal identity. He struggled all his life — in the end, successfully — not so much to overcome these fears as to coexist with them. In public, he was much more conventional, much more characteristically paternalistic. He maintained in print, for example, that religion was a valuable asset to society and to mankind and that Anglicanism, as the English state religion, ought therefore to be carefully protected: "Permitting men to preach any opinion contrary to the doctrine of the established church," he wrote, "tends, in a certain degree, to lessen the authority of
the church, and, consequently, to lessen the influence of religion."
What were Johnson’s views about the Christian religion?
The summer he turned 82, my father lost his stories. He was still vibrant, garrulous and energetic, and initially, none of us noticed that his anecdotes were getting repetitive, that he was forgetting names and places, that he was confusing times and references. A man of many narratives, we listened to his oft-repeated tales, sometimes with feigned patience and sometimes with visible impatience.
Till the day the stories stopped. The words dried out. The memories disappeared. The change happened so gradually that its final suddenness took us, his immediate family by complete surprise. And when the stories dried up, the energy seemed to drain away from his soul. This loss of energy was immediately and visibly apparent as this was one trait, above all others that characterized my father.
A child of Partition, Baba had left his native Barisal in present-day Bangladesh, on the eve of this momentous event in 1947, at the age of 14. My grandmother, widowed since the birth of my father, her youngest son, decided to leave their sprawling homestead with extensive farming lands and immigrate to the yet-to-be formed republic of India, along with her four other sons. Thus, family lore tells us, she liquidated some of her assets, packed her immediate family and necessary belongings onto a steamer and sailed into the teeming, seething city of Calcutta to set up a new life.
A seminal rupture in the subcontinent, Partition had wreaked havoc among countless families, uprooted and flung far and wide without any recourse. Baba often became that recourse – his contribution making a significant difference to families struggling to survive with some degree of dignity. It seemed his experience of early loss and deprivation had in a strangely converse way, endowed him with a generosity of soul that I have yet to encounter in another person.
It was thus shocking to see this extraordinary man with the mind, heart and soul of a Colossus shorn of his spirit.
In an effort to revive his flagging interest, I urged him to start writing down stories from his life. I bought him a notebook and with great flourish announced his assignment.
Stories were my particular stock in trade. I’d nurtured an early passion for storytelling and story writing into a teaching career focussed on literacy. I used specific strategies to build a writing habit in my students, centered on the belief that we all have stories to tell. As the children became confident and joyful storytellers, their acquisition of benchmarked literacy skills outstripped that of their peers.
Could I use these same strategies to draw the forgotten stories from Baba? Would these forgotten stories, in turn, help him reconstruct a sense of self?
[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from: “Her father’s memories were slipping away. She made him tell stories so that he could hold on to them”, by Ranu Bhattacharyya, Scroll, 2019.]
What does the word ‘garrulous’ as used in the passage mean?
Read the passage and answer the question based on it.
Civilization is basically a vital kind of grouping. Without civilizations, the world as we know it would not be. Civilizations have different qualities than regular groups of people such as nomads. For example, a civilization develops surpluses of things which helps the people be a stable community. These surpluses also create the construction and growth of cities and help develop secure, formal states. The government is also present in civilizations. One very important part of a civilization is an advanced writing method. A civilization can only be complete with all of these factors, or it will just fall apart. Nomads are nowhere close to being a civilization even though sometimes groups of nomads have good technology. The words 'culture' and 'civilization' have been often used synonymously, though they have clearly defined meanings differentiating them. 'Civilization' means the betterment of ways of living, making Nature bend to fulfill the needs of humankind. It includes also organizing societies into politically well-defined groups working collectively for improved conditions of life in matters of food, dress, communication, and so on. Thus a group considers itself as civilized, while others were looked down upon as barbarians. This has led to wars and holocausts, resulting in the mass destruction of human beings. What are the good parts of our civilization? First and foremost there are order and safety. If today I have a quarrel with another man, I do not get beaten merely because I am physically weaker and he can kick me down. I go to law, and the law will decide as fairly as it can between the two of us. Thus in disputes between man and man right has taken the place of might. Moreover, the law protects me from robbery and violence. Nobody may come and break into my house, steal my goods or run off with my children. Of course, there are burglars, but they are very rare, and the law punishes them whenever it catches them. It is difficult for us to realize how much this safety means. Without safety, these higher activities of mankind which make up civilization could not go on. The inventor could not invent, the scientist find out or the artist make beautiful things. Hence, order and safety, although they are not themselves civilization are things without which civilization would be impossible. They are as necessary to our civilization as the air we breathe is to us, and we have grown so used to them that we do not notice them any more than we notice the air. Another great achievement of our civilization is that today civilized men are largely free from the fear of pain. They still fall ill, but illness is no longer the terrible thing it used to be... Not only do men and women enjoy better health; they live longer than they ever did before, and they have a much better chance of growing up... Thirdly, our civilization is more secure than any that have gone before it. This is because it is much more widely spread... Previous civilizations were specialized and limited, they were like oases in a desert.
The essential condition for the promotion of higher activities of life is:
Paragraph: On the surface, the conquest of the Aztec empire by Herman Cortes is one of the most amazing military accomplishments in history. With a small fighting force numbering in the hundreds, Cortes led the Spanish explorers into victory against an Aztec population that many believe topped 21 million. In light of such a seemingly impossible victory, the obvious question is: how did a small group of foreign fighters manage to topple one of the world's strongest, wealthiest, and most successful military empires?
Several factors led to Cortes' success. First, the Spanish exploited animosity toward the Aztecs among rival groups and convinced thousands of locals to fight. In one account of a battle, it is recorded that at least 200,000 natives fought with Cortes. Next, the Spanish possessed superior military equipment in the form of European cannons, guns, and crossbows, leading to effective and efficient disposal of Aztec defenses. For example, Spanish cannons quickly defeated large Aztec walls that had protected the empire against big and less technically advanced armies.
Despite the Spanish advantages, the Aztecs probably could have succeeded in defending their capital city of Tenochtitlan had they leveraged their incredible population base to increase their army's size and ensured that no rogue cities would ally with Cortes. In order to accomplish this later goal, Aztec leader Motecuhzoma needed to send envoys to neighboring cities telling their inhabitants about the horrors of Spanish conquest and the inevitability of Spanish betrayal.
In addition, the Aztecs should have exploited the fact that the battle was taking place on their territory. No reason existed for the Aztecs to consent to a conventional battle, which heavily favored the Spanish. Motecuhzoma's forces should have thought outside the box and allowed Cortes into the city, only to subsequently use hundreds of thousands of fighters to prevent escape and proceed in surprise "door-to-door" combat. With this type of battle, the Aztecs would have largely thwarted Spanish technological supremacy. However, in the end, the superior weaponry of the Spanish, the pent-up resentment of Aztec rivals, the failure of Aztec diplomacy, and the lack of an unconventional Aztec war plan led to one of the most surprising military outcomes in the past one thousand years.
The author's tone can best be described as?
Read the passage and answer the question following it.
Roger Rosenblatt's book 'Black Fiction', manages to alter the approach taken in many previous studies by making an attempt to apply literary rather than socio-political criteria to subject Rosenblatt points out that criticism of Black writing has very often served as a pretext for an expounding on Black history. The recent work of Addison Gayle's passes judgment on the value of Black fiction by clear political standards, rating each work according to the ideas of Black identity, which it propounds. Though fiction results from political circumstances, its author reacts not in ideological ways to those circumstances and talking about novels and stories primarily as instruments of ideology circumvents much of the enterprise. Affinities and connections are revealed in the works of Black fiction in Rosenblatt's literary analysis; these affinities and connections have been overlooked and ignored by solely political studies.
The writing of acceptable criticism of Black fiction, however, presumes to give satisfactory answers to quite a few questions. The most important of all, is there a sufficient reason, apart from the racial identity of the authors, for the grouping together of Black authors? Secondly, what is the distinction of Black fiction from other modern fiction with which it is largely contemporaneous? In the work, Rosenblatt demonstrates that Black fiction is a distinct body of writing, which has an identifiable, coherent literary tradition. He highlights recurring concerns and designs, which are independent of chronology in Black fiction written over the past eighty years. These concerns and designs are thematic, and they come to form the central fact of the predominant white culture, where the Black characters in the novel are situated irrespective of whether they attempt to conform to that culture or they rebel against it.
Rosenblatt's work does leave certain aesthetic questions open. His thematic analysis allows considerable objectivity; he even clearly states that he does not intend to judge the merit of the various works yet his reluctance seems misplaced, especially since an attempt to appraise might have led to interesting results. For example, certain novels have an appearance of structural diffusion. Is this a defeat, or are the authors working out of, or attempting to forge, a different kind of aesthetic? Apart from this, the style of certain Black novels, like Jean Toomer's Cane, verges on expressionism or surrealism; does this technique provide a counterpoint to the prevalent theme that portrays the fate against which Black heroes are pitted, a theme usually conveyed by more naturalistic modes of expressions?
Irrespective of such omissions, what Rosenblatt talks about in his work makes for an astute and worthwhile study. His book very effectively surveys a variety of novels, highlighting certain fascinating and little-known works like James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. Black Fiction is tightly constructed, and levelheaded and penetrating criticism is exemplified in its forthright and lucid style.
Rosenblatt's discussion of Black Fiction is
The question in this section is based on a single passage. The question is to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The spread of education in society is at the foundation of success in countries that are latecomers to development. In the quest for development, primary education is absolutely essential because it creates the base. But higher education is just as important for it provides the cutting edge. And universities are the life-blood of higher education. Islands of excellence in professional education, such as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), are valuable complements but cannot be substituted for universities that provide educational opportunities for people at large.
There can be no doubt that higher education has made a significant contribution to economic development, social progress and political democracy in independent India. It is a source of dynamism for the economy. It has created social opportunities for people, it has fostered the vibrant democracy in our polity. It has provided a beginning for the creation of a knowledge society. But it would be a mistake to focus on its strengths alone. It has weaknesses that are a cause for serious concern. There is, in fact, a quiet crisis in higher education in India that runs deep. It is not yet discernible simply because there are pockets of excellence, an enormous reservoir of talented young people and intense competition in the admissions process. And, in some important spheres, we continue to reap the benefits of what was sown in higher education 50 years ago by the founding fathers of the republic. The reality is that we have miles to go. The proportion of our population, in the age group 18-24, that enters the world of higher education is around 7%, which is only one-half the average for Asia. The opportunities for higher education, in terms of the number of places in universities, are simply not enough in relation to our needs. What is more, the quality of higher education in most of our universities requires substantial improvement? IT is clear that the system of higher education in India faces serious challenges. It needs a systematic overhaul so that we can educated much larger numbers without diluting academic standards. This is imperative because the transformation of economy and society in the 21st century would depend, in significant part, on the spread and the quality of education among our people, particularly in the sphere of higher education. It is only an inclusive society that can provide the foundations for a knowledge society.
The challenges that confront higher education in India are clear. It needs a massive expansion of opportunities for higher education, to 1500 universities nationwide, that would enable India to attain a gross enrolment ration of at least 15% by 2015. It is just as important to raise the average quality of higher education in very sphere. At the same time, it is essential to create institutions that are exemplars of excellence at par with the best in the world. In the pursuit of these objectives, providing people with access to higher education in a socially inclusive manner is imperative. The realization of these objectives, combined with access, would not only develop the skills and capabilities we need for the economy but would also help transform India into a knowledge economy and society.
According to the passage, which of the following is correct?
Choose the word that is opposite in the meaning of the given word.
Dissemination
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
Although the legal systems of England and the United States are superficially similar, they differ profoundly in their approaches to and uses of legal reasons: substantive reasons are more common than formal reasons in the United States, whereas in England the reverse is true. This distinction reflects a difference in the visions of law that prevails in the two countries. In England, the law has traditionally been viewed as a system of rules; the United States favours a vision of law as an outward expression of a community's sense of right and justice.
Substantive reasons, as applied to law, are based on moral, economic, political and other considerations. These reasons are found both "in the law" and ''outside the law" so to speak. Substantive reasons inform the content of a large part of the law: constitutions, statutes, contracts, verdicts and the like. Consider, for example, a statute providing that "no vehicles shall be taken into public parks." Suppose that no specific rationales or purposes were explicitly written into the statute, but that it was clear (from its legislative history) that the substantive purpose of the statute was to ensure quiet and safety in the park. Now suppose that a veterans' group mounts a World War II jeep (in running order but without a battery) as a war memorial on a concrete slab in the park, and charges are brought against its members. Most judges in the United States would find the defendants not guilty because what they did had no adverse effect on the park's quiet and safety. Formal reasons are different in that they frequently prevent substantive reasons from coming into play, even when substantive reasons are explicitly incorporated into the law at hand. For example, when a document fails to comply with stipulated requirements, the court may render the document legally ineffective. A Will requiring written witness may be declared null and void and, therefore, unenforceable for the formal reason that the requirement was not observed. Once the legal rule - that a Will is invalid for lack of proper witnessing - has been clearly established, and the legality of the rule is not in question, application of that rule precludes from consideration substantive arguments in favour of Will's validity or enforcement. Legal scholars in England and the United States have long bemused themselves with extreme examples of formal and substantive reasoning. On the one hand, formal reasoning in England has led to wooden interpretations of statutes and an unwillingness to develop the common law through judicial activism. On the other hand, freewheeling substantive reasoning in the United States has resulted in statutory interpretations so liberal that the texts of some statutes have been ignored.
It can be inferred from the passage that English judges would like to find the veterans' group discussed in the second paragraph guilty of violating the statute because
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
Although the legal systems of England and the United States are superficially similar, they differ profoundly in their approaches to and uses of legal reasons: substantive reasons are more common than formal reasons in the United States, whereas in England the reverse is true. This distinction reflects a difference in the visions of law that prevails in the two countries. In England, the law has traditionally been viewed as a system of rules; the United States favours a vision of law as an outward expression of a community's sense of right and justice.
Substantive reasons, as applied to law, are based on moral, economic, political and other considerations. These reasons are found both "in the law" and ''outside the law" so to speak. Substantive reasons inform the content of a large part of the law: constitutions, statutes, contracts, verdicts and the like. Consider, for example, a statute providing that "no vehicles shall be taken into public parks." Suppose that no specific rationales or purposes were explicitly written into the statute, but that it was clear (from its legislative history) that the substantive purpose of the statute was to ensure quiet and safety in the park. Now suppose that a veterans' group mounts a World War II jeep (in running order but without a battery) as a war memorial on a concrete slab in the park, and charges are brought against its members. Most judges in the United States would find the defendants not guilty because what they did had no adverse effect on the park's quiet and safety. Formal reasons are different in that they frequently prevent substantive reasons from coming into play, even when substantive reasons are explicitly incorporated into the law at hand. For example, when a document fails to comply with stipulated requirements, the court may render the document legally ineffective. A Will requiring written witness may be declared null and void and, therefore, unenforceable for the formal reason that the requirement was not observed. Once the legal rule - that a Will is invalid for lack of proper witnessing - has been clearly established, and the legality of the rule is not in question, application of that rule precludes from consideration substantive arguments in favour of Will's validity or enforcement. Legal scholars in England and the United States have long bemused themselves with extreme examples of formal and substantive reasoning. On the one hand, formal reasoning in England has led to wooden interpretations of statutes and an unwillingness to develop the common law through judicial activism. On the other hand, freewheeling substantive reasoning in the United States has resulted in statutory interpretations so liberal that the texts of some statutes have been ignored.
From the discussion of Wills in the third paragraph, it can be inferred that substantive arguments as to the validity of a Will might be considered under which one of the following circumstances?
Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.
Teaching, more even than most other professions, has been transformed during the last hundred years from a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a minority of the population, to a large and important branch of public service. The profession has a great and honourable tradition, extending from the dawn of history until recent times, but any teacher in the modern world who allows himself to be inspired by the ideals of his predecessors is likely to be made sharply aware that it is not his function to teach what he thinks, but to instill such beliefs and prejudices as are thought useful by his employers.
In modern times, a successful teacher is primarily supposed to
