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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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The passage's description of Leighton and Wirawan's research suggests that which of the following was required for a rain-forest plot to be selected for study?
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According to the passage, the conclusion that "canopy trees suffered more from drought than from fire" is based on data indicating that
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The author would likely include which of the following evidence in the "facts of chronology"
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The author of the passage would be most likely to disagree with the "agricultural historians" over whether
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The author's reference to the fact that "even low elemental concentrations and minute features in diamonds can now be analyzed" serves primarily to
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It can be inferred from the passage that natural diamonds are of geological interest because they provide information about
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Recently, controversial findings were released that suggest that the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by United States forests might be greater than the amount emitted by the nation's fossil-fuel combustion. This conclusion has two astonishing implications. First, the United States may not be directly contributing to rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. Second, the atmosphere seems to be benefiting from young forests, which are particularly efficient at absorbing carbon dioxide. But these young forests exist only because old-growth forests were clear-cut in earlier centuries. The possibility that the United States absorbs more carbon dioxide than it produces thus does not reflect efforts to protect the environment; rather, it reflects a history of deforestation and development.
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Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the author's argument that the ability of the United States to absorb more carbon dioxide than it produces is not a result of efforts to protect the environment?
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It can be inferred from the passage that the author assumes which of the following about United States carbon dioxide emissions?
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Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?
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Few topics engender more controversy among musicologists than the "authentic" performance of music of earlier periods. At issue are claims made by partisans of the early music movement that their performances represent a re-creation of history and that the historical information on which such performances are based provide a sure foundation for performances that accurately reflect the composer's original intentions. Taruskin has been the most powerful critic of this view, arguing that so-called authentic performances do not reveal any concrete truth of how the music of earlier times "should" sound. Instead, these performances reflect our contemporary taste for this repertoire's sound and offer a twentieth-century interpretation that, while based on certain historical facts, is encumbered with the unconscious biases inherent in any interpretive endeavor.
Yet, despite their flaws, historical investigations and interpretations remain an indispensable part of music scholarship. Indeed, Taruskin is not engaged in a wholesale crusade against the early music movement or against performance-practice research; rather, he is calling for intellectual honesty. His arguments are important because they help clarify the thin line between historical facts, on the one hand, and, on the other, musical interpretations based not only on those facts but also on imaginative, well-founded speculation.
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