29.02.16

https://www.facebook.com/events/1051680678223018/

1.(a) World Bank reports, among others, have come to the conclusion
that the growth of the biofuel industry has a serious impact on food
scarcity and food inflation the world over.

(b) Biofuel evangelism started in the 1970s and was at its peak in the
following decades.

(c) US markets have seen major distortions in the food market because
of ethanol subsidies while there has been food scarcity in Mexico
because of the diversion of corn for ethanol production.

(d) But over the past few years, there has been a mounting pile of
evidence that going the biofuel route can cause more harm than good.

(e) The more arable land is diverted to growing biofuel crops, the
less there is for cultivating food crops.
a)
bdaec
b)
abdec
c)
baecd
d)
ecabd

2.(a) The principal assumption of the anti-smoking movement has been
that tobacco companies persuade teens to smoke by lying to them, by
making smoking sound a lot more desirable and a lot less harmful than
it really is.

(b) And we've run extensive public health campaigns on television and
radio and in magazines to try to educate teens about the dangers of
smoking.

(c) We've raised the price of cigarettes and enforced the law against
selling tobacco to minors, to try to make it much harder for teens to
buy cigarettes.

(d) To address that problem, then, we've restricted and policed
cigarette advertising, so it's a lot harder for tobacco companies to
lie.

(e) Teenage smoking is one of the great, baffling phenomena of modern
life – no one really knows how to fight it, or even, for that matter,
what it is.
a)
edcba
b)
eadcb
c)
aedcb
d)
ecbda



3.(a) Although they may sound as if they don't have very much in
common, they share a basic, underlying pattern.

(b) They simply wore the shoes when they went to clubs or cafes or
walked the streets of downtown New York, and in so doing exposed other
people to their fashion sense.

(c) The rise of Hush Puppies and the fall of New York's crime rate are
textbook examples of epidemics in action.

(d) No one took out an advertisement and told people that the
traditional Hush Puppies were cool and they should start wearing them.

(e) They infected them with the Hush Puppies "virus".

(f) First of all, they are clear examples of contagious behavior.
a)
cfdabe
b)
cfadeb
c)
cafdbe
d)
dbecaf


OMO

4.
a)
However, Golden Rice is not produced by a corporate behemoth but by
the public sector whose aim is to double food production; and reduce
the number of deaths and cases of blindness caused by vitamin A
deficiency.
b)
If the green revolution had never happened, and yields had stayed at
1960 levels, the world could not produce its current food output even
if it ploughed up every last acre of cultivable land.
c)
In August 2014, environmentalists in the Philippines vandalised a
field of Golden Rice − an experimental grain whose genes had been
modified to carry beta-carotene, a chemical precursor of vitamin A −
claiming that genetically modified (GM) crops pose health risks.
d)
Hence, vandalising Golden Rice (GM) field trials is a bit like the
campaign of some religious leaders to prevent smallpox inoculations:
it causes misery, even death, in the name of obscurantism and
unscientific belief.

OMO

5.
a)
A few though, keep getting better when they're dead, such as the
Chilean novelist and short story writer, Roberto Bolaño.
b)
The successful contemporary writer is an extremely laudable, and
lauded, person, but can also be a pompous and precious one.
c)
Some great authors have published their worst works from beyond the grave.
d)
His seminal five-part novel, 2666, came out posthumously, won the
National Book Critics Circle Award and convinced the world he was not
just a master of the short form but could put out his life's best work
at nearly 900 pages, even after death.

OMO
6.
a)
For Europe's surviving piano-makers, it's a case of changing their
tune or facing the music.
b)
Pleyel, in business for over two centuries, was Chopin's favourite and
counted Stravinsky, Liszt and Debussy among its customers.
c)
The endorsement of august musicians has not saved it after decades of
struggling to compete with less pricey pianos from the Far East.
d)
But the French piano-maker recently said that its last workshop will
close this month.

OMO



7.
a)
Worthless currency is not necessarily useless; it can be a pointed way
of shaming someone who asks for a bribe.
b)
They look roughly like 50-rupee notes; people are encouraging to hand
them to corrupt officials, signalling resistance to sleaze.
c)
That is the thinking behind zero-rupee notes, an Indian
anti-corruption gimmick now attracting world-wide interest.
d)
But in places where public opinion is already shifting, they could be
a useful way of making bureaucrats behave better.

8.Diwali, the festival of lights, signifies that good will always be
better than evil. In the present day many people have developed a lot
of negativity in their minds and hearts, which has led to high
corruption and higher crime rates. Value based education is the need
of the day to eliminate the darkness of cruelty, selfishness and greed
and bring the light of wisdom, peace, kindness, truthfulness, right
attitude, hard work and co-operation. Mahatma Gandhi said that we
should eradicate not the sinner but the sins from our hearts; if a
society has people with good hearts, it will definitely flourish.

What conclusion can be drawn from the above argument?
a)
Nowadays nobody is good even though good is always better than evil.
b)
Nowadays everybody is a corrupt person or a criminal.
c)
Value based education can save a society from crime and corruption.
d)
It is not possible to fight against corruption as everybody is corrupt.


9.There is a direct correlation between the return rate of customers
and the type of service provided by a customer-service employee. The
theory is simple. If employees are happy and motivated, they will
treat customers well. If customers are treated well, they will return.

What inference can be drawn from the above argument?
a)
If customers are treated badly, they will be inclined to switch to
another service provider.
b)
If customer-service employees are paid badly they will become
unmotivated and reluctant to provide quality service to their
customers.
c)
If customers are treated badly by the customer-service employees, the
return rate of customers will increase.
d)
Both (A) and (C)

10.Generally the male catbirds construct decorated nests. Based on the
fact that different local populations of catbirds belonging to the
same species build nests that exhibit different building and
decorative styles, researchers have concluded that catbirds' building
styles are a culturally acquired rather than a genetically transmitted
trait.

Which of the following strengthens the argument?
a)
There are more common characteristics than differences in styles of
local catbird population.
b)
Nests of one species of catbird have fewer flowers and ornamental
characteristics than nests of another species.
c)
Young male catbirds are inept at nest building and spend years
watching elders before becoming accomplished.
d)
Catbirds are found only in New Guinea and Australia apparently when
local populations of birds seldom have contact with one another.

#SC

Select all that are correct:

11

a)
Costa Rica's Turrialba volcano belched up a column of gas and ash up
to 3,280 feet (1 km) into the air on Thursday
b)
in its powerful eruption in two decades. Four explosions emanated from
the volcano in central Costa Rica
c)
and ash reached parts of San Jose, the capital, some 30 miles (50 km)
away, where the airport was closed.
d)
It was the volcano's strongest eruption from 1996. Costa Rica's
emergency services ordered the close of access roads
e)
near the volcano, which is major tourist draw, and were evacuating
residents from a radius of just over a mile around the volcano.

#SC

12

Select all that are correct:

a)
Scientists always wish to learn more about watery worlds which may
exist in the universe because life depends on water to thrive.
b)
They have suspected long that there was an ocean of liquid water on
Ganymede – Jupiter's largest moon and the largest moon in the solar
system.
c)
NASA scientists have located an ocean on Ganymede that may actually
hold more water than all of Earth's surface water combined.
d)
Scientists think the ocean is about 100 kilometers thick, 10 times as
the depth of Earth's oceans, NASA added.
e)
Parts of Ganymede may have been formed by water bubbling up from the
moon's interior through faults or cryo-volcanos.


#SC

13

Select all that are correct:

a)
Within two months, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle
accelerator that had been shut up
b)
will be back in with a vengeance, colliding protons at mind-numbing
energies that have never been achieved in a man-made machine.
c)
Physicists hope that these energies will be enough to produce new
particles or phenomena that exposes secrets the universe has thus far
been unwilling to give up.
d)
In particular, the upcoming run at the LHC could yield evidence for an
idea called supersymmetry, which would be upheld
e)
if extra particles and dimensions of matter showed up, and which would
explain many puzzling facets of the cosmos.


#SC

14

Select all that are correct:

a)
Amid rumours that precision gene-editing technique have been used to
modify the DNA of human embryos,
b)
researchers have called for a moratorium in the use of the technology
in reproductive cells.
c)
Gene-editing tools, are currently used to develop therapies that
correct genetic defects in people, could be exploited for
non-therapeutic modifications.
d)
Known as germline modification, edits to embryos, eggs or sperm are of
particular concern because persons created using such cells
e)
would have had their genetic make-up changed without consent, and
would permanently hand that change down to future generations.

15.(a) And the schoolbook pictures of primitive man sometimes omit
some of the detractions of his primitive life – the pain, the disease,
famine, the hard labour needed just to stay alive.

(b) But this argument, though romantically appealing, doesn't hold up.

(c) From that agony of bare existence to modern life can be soberly
described only as upward progress and the sole agent for this progress
is quite clearly reason itself.

(d) It's sometimes argued that there's no real progress; that a
civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the
land and oceans with ever larger quantities of debris, can hardly be
called an advance over the simpler hunting and gathering and
agricultural existence of prehistoric times.

(e) The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than
does modern society, ancient wars were committed with far less moral
justification than modern ones, and a technology that produces debris
can find ways of disposing of it without ecological upset.
a)
eadcb
b)
deacb
c)
daceb
d)
dbeac

16.Researchers studying the Ngamambo tribes, which inhabited parts of
South Africa as early as 1200 BC, have unearthed certain relics that
have led anthropologists to conclude that the tribals could read and
write in an undeciphered non-Semitic language. This proves that
contrary to popular belief, the Ngamambo tribes were actually a
cultured people.

Which of the following, if true, offers the most support for the
conclusion drawn in the paragraph above?
a)
The relics unearthed by the researchers also include refined pottery
and sophisticated architecture.
b)
There are many non-Semitic languages prevalent in various parts of
South Africa in periods as early as 800 B.C. A lot of interest has
been generated by anthropologists around the world about the language
spoken by the Ngamambo tribes as it may help them to understand the
lifestyles of tribals.
c)
All through history it has been demonstrated that communities that
have only speech do not move beyond very low levels of cultural
development.
d)
The Ovimbundu tribes, known to be very cultured and sophisticated,
inhabited some periods of South Africa during the same period as the
Ngamambo tribes.

17."Constant and consistent communication, while at times sounding
like a broken record, is the single most reassuring thing I can do for
all stakeholders: employees, investors, customers, media, and senior
management... And it's always the same basic message, which is our
vision for the company."

If the author is a CEO of the company, he is most likely to agree with
which of the following?
a)
The vision of the company, and the basic message that the CEO would
like to give all stakeholders, is that they will always remain in
touch with all of them and will deliver consistent content in their
communication.
b)
Appreciation of employees' efforts by the CEO is missing in today's
world. Employees in organizations where the CEO does not communicate
to them on a frequent basis are likely to be demotivated.
c)
Senior management has the responsibility to communicate frequently to
all shareholders.
d)
It is not just communication of our views that is important, one needs
to reiterate the same on multiple forums for it to be digested by all
stakeholders.


18.Most companies that use satisfaction surveys to learn how happy
their customers are with their products and services often mislead
themselves. What matters is not what customers say about the level of
satisfaction, but whether they feel thevalue they received will keep
them loyal. Loyalty or repurchase behaviour is the only true measure
of customer satisfaction. As tools for measuring the value a company
delivers to its customers, satisfaction surveys are not very useful
because, amongst other reasons, they focus primarily on transactional
issues, such as product quality, deliveries, technical knowledge,
hygiene factors, product specs etc. These items are simply the minimum
requirements for entry into the market. As tools for predicting
whether customers will purchase more of the company's products and
services, they have proved to be all but useless. Many executives feel
that "good" scores (e.g. an average of 4 out of 5) are an indication
that the company/customer relationship is strong. In other words, a
level of satisfaction below complete (5) is acceptable. After all,
this is the real world, where products and services are rarely perfect
and customers are hard to please. However, research has shown that
there is no direct (straight line) correlation between customer
satisfaction and customer loyalty and only customers showing "top box"
scores close to 100% are likely to remain loyal.

Which of the following strengthens the argument?
a)
Perception is a far better indicator of a brand's future than current reality.
b)
A company XYZ used customer satisfaction surveys but its sales were
lower than the last year.
c)
ABC Corporation, a company outsourcing customer satisfaction surveys
has shown a drastic cut in business.
d)
There are many companies that have fallen on troubled times, not
because they no longer paid attention to customer requirements,
product quality/ specifications, technical knowledge etc., but because
previous customers renounced their faith in the company's product.



22.Which of the following is a viable conclusion to the debate on
whether scientists should look for connections between genes and
violent behavioural patterns?
a)
The government will be able to screen people to see if they have genes
that incline them to violence.
b)
There is a definite connection between genes and violent behavioural
patterns amongst adolescents as all aggressive people have low
serotonin levels and the way out of criminality is to find out how
genes contribute to violence.
c)
Scientists are naive about the implications of their research and the
political agendas it might further even as demonising or stereotyping
certain minorities becomes a norm.
d)
Scientists will be able to better understand human behaviour and will
be able to consider genetic research on violence in the context of a
society desperately seeking solutions to violent crime.




#RC

Football refers to a number of sports that involve, to varying
degrees,kicking aball with the foot to score agoal. The different
variations of football are called football codes. Some examples of
these codes include soccer (UK), gridiron football (United States and
Canada); rules football orrugby league (Australia);Gaelic football
(Ireland); andrugby football (New Zealand).

Imagine a football game. The players wish to gain the advantage for
their own side, and their behaviour is ordered, with shared rules,
governing the unpredictable immediacy of the run of play. The
spectators are absorbed in watching.

But on the sideline, player number twelve wants to get on the pitch to
take part. How is the substitution to be done? If he leaps about, his
frantic antics might be noticed as a distraction, but they won't get
him on. To succeed he needs, first, to be known and recognized as a
bona fide player. Second, he must go through an established routine to
catch the referee's eye. Finally, some other player has to be
displaced from the field to make room for him. Only then will he make
his mark and, if he's lucky, gain the attention of the spectators.

Events don't get into the news simply by happening, no matter how
frantically. They too must fit in with what is already there. Events
need to be known and recognized, coming from a known, trusted and
representative source. To win inclusion in any particular news, they
must fulfill a certain number of criteria and must be seen as
newsworthy. Finally, newsworthy events themselves must jostle for
inclusion in the limited number of slots available.

In order to pick out newsworthy events from the jostling crowd of
clowns on the sidelines of their game, journalists use an informal
paradigm of news values. Galtang and Ruge isolated a series of
conditions which have to be fulfilled before an event is selected for
attention. Some of these are general conditions, applicable not just
to news, but to the perception of events at large. The others are more
'culture-bound': these are the news values underlying selection in
news media in the 'north-western corner of the world'. Here is their
list of general news values:

(1) Frequency: Murders take very little time and their meaning is
quickly arrived at. Hence their frequency fits that of daily
newspapers and programmes. On the other hand, economic, social or
cultural trends take longer to unfold and to be made meaningful and
they have to be 'marked' by means of devices like the release of
reports or statistics on a particular day.

(2) Threshold: There is a threshold below which an event will not be
reported at all (varying in intensity between, for instance, local and
national news). And once reported, there is a further threshold of
drama: the bigger the story, the more added drama is needed to keep it
going. War reporting is an example of this.

(3) Unambiguity: The clarity of an event. Events don't have to be
simple, necessarily, but the range of possible meanings must be
limited. In this way news-discourse differs radically from literary
discourse. In news, the intrinsic polysemic nature of both events and
accounts of them is reduced as much as possible; in literature it is
celebrated and exploited.

(4) Meaningfulness:

(a) Cultural proximity: Events that accord with the cultural
background of the news-gatherers will be seen as more meaningful than
others and so more liable to be selected. Also, within 'our' culture,
events connected with underprivileged or ethnic groups, with regions
remote from the centralized bases of news organizations, or with
specifically working-class culture, will be seen as less intrinsically
meaningful than those associated with central, official, literate
culture.

(b) Relevance: Events in far-off cultures will nevertheless become
newsworthy if they impinge on the news-gatherer's 'home' culture −
usually in the form of a threat; as with OPEC and the (mostly Arab)
countries with oil − their lifestyles are suddenly fascinating for
Western journalists.

(5) Consonance: The predictability of, or desire for, an event. If the
media expect something to happen, then it will.

(6) Unexpectedness: The unpredictability, or rarity, of an event.

(7) Continuity: The 'running' story. If an event is covered, it will
continue to be covered for some time.

(8) Composition: The mixture of different kinds of event. If a
newspaper or TV bulletin is packed with major foreign stories, a
relatively insignificant domestic story will be included to balance
the mixture.

These basic news values give a good idea of the kind of event that
will survive the selection process.




23. DIRECTIONS for question 89: Select one or more answer choices
according to the directions given in the question.

Which of the following statements can be understood from the passage?


Select all that apply:

a)
Events get into the news by being a part of the event.
b)
Galtang and Ruge studied the 'culture bound' nature of news.
c)
Player 12 gets into the game by getting the referee's eye, by being a
bonafide player and by being known and recognized.
d)
The word 'polysemic' means 'explicitness'.
e)
According to the passage, frequency is one thing for murders and the
like, and another for events that unfold slowly – frequency is marked
by periodic release of analysis or data.



24. 'Culture bound' in the context of the passage would be
a)
contextual news in a culture or news related to culture.
b)
defined, shaped and limited by culture.
c)
within the cultural bounds.
d)
All of the above.


25. Which of the following could be an appropriate title to the passage?
a)
Galtang and Ruge analysis
b)
News and Newsworthiness
c)
Understanding News
d)
Newsworthy News


#RC

Darn those pesky Japanese. Sometime over the last few years, when I
wasn't looking, the Japanese muda-mura-muri meme slipped into the
lexicon of people concerned with lean process management. The
elimination of waste has been the goal of Lean, a production practice
that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than
the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful and thus a
target for elimination. Muda, muri and mura are the three types of
waste defined by Toyota Production System (TPS).

Muda is unproductive waste: any activity or excess resource
consumption that does not add value to whatever you're creating. Mura
is any imbalance, unevenness or inconsistency in your process, whether
brought on by you, or imposed on you from the outside. Mura drives
Muda! By failing to smooth our demand you put unfair demands on your
processes and people and cause the creation of inventory and other
wastes. Muri means unreasonableness, to cause overburden or give
unnecessary stress to your employees or processes. This is caused by
failures in our system such as lack of training, unclear or no defined
ways of working, wrong tools, and ill thought out measures of
performance. To reiterate, Muri is all the unreasonable work that
management imposes on workers and machines because of poor
organization, such as carrying heavy weights, dangerous tasks, even
working significantly faster than usual. It is pushing a person or a
machine beyond its natural limits. This may simply be asking a greater
level of performance from a process than it can handle without taking
shortcuts and informally modifying decision criteria. Unreasonable
work is almost always a cause of multiple variations. There are
distinctions between value-adding activity, waste and non-value adding
work. Non-value adding work is waste that must be done under the
present work conditions.

To link these three types of wastes is simple. Firstly, muri focuses
on the preparation and planning of the process, or what work can be
avoided proactively by design. Next, mura then focuses on how the work
design is implemented and the elimination of fluctuation at the
scheduling or operation level, such as quality and volume. Muda is
then discovered after the process is in place and is dealt with
reactively. It is seen through variation in output. It is the role of
management to examine the muda, in the processes and eliminate the
deeper causes by considering the connections to the muri and the mura
of the system. ___________________________________

A typical example of the interplay of these wastes is the corporate
behavior of "making the numbers" as the end of a reporting period
approaches. Demand is raised to 'make plan', increasing (mura), when
the numbers are low, which causes production to try to squeeze extra
capacity from the process, which causes routines and standards to be
modified or stretched. This stretch and improvisation leads to
muri-style waste, which leads to downtime, mistakes and backflows, and
waiting, thus the muda of waiting, correction and movement.

The popular seven muda are:

(1) Transport (moving products that are not actually required to
perform the processing, the waste is in terms of loads and distance
travelled)

(2) Inventory (all components, work in progress and stocks of finished
products and raw material that a company holds)


(3) Motion (people or equipment moving or walking more than is
required to perform the processing)

(4) Waiting (waiting for the next production step, for the machine to
finish or for the product to arrive)



(5) Overproduction (production ahead of demand or beyond what the
customer ordered)

(6) Overprocessing (conducting operations beyond those that the
customer requires, resulting from poor tool or product design creating
activity)



(7) Defects (product rejects and the effort involved in inspecting for
and fixing defects).

It is important to measure or estimate the size of these wastes, to
demonstrate the effect of the changes achieved and the movement
towards the goal. The "flow" (or smoothness) based approach aims to
achieve Just-in-Time (JIT), by removing the variation caused by work
scheduling and thereby provide a driver, rationale or target and
priorities for implementation, using a variety of techniques. The
effort to achieve JIT exposes many quality problems that are hidden by
buffer stocks; by forcing smooth flow of only value-adding steps,
these problems become visible and must be dealt with explicitly.




27. Which of the following statements is/ are true as per the passage?


(i) It is not possible for Mura and Muda to precede Muri.

(ii) Muda is result, Mura is action and Muri is thought.

(iii) Muda is independent of Muri and Mura.

(iv) Achieving Mura, Muri and Muda are the goals of Lean and Toyota.
a)
(ii) and (iii)
b)
(ii), (iii) and (iv)
c)
Only (ii)
d)
(i) and (iv)

28. Which of the following recommendations/ situations correspond to
the interrelation or interplay among muda, mura and muri?
a)
One should design the system with sufficient capacity to fulfill
customer requirements without overburdening people, equipment, or
methods (muri), strive to reduce variation/fluctuation (mura) to a
bare minimum and then strive to eliminate sources of waste (muda).
b)
If you're running a delivery business and you overload a truck (muri)
to the point where it breaks down, that truck's load will now have to
be redistributed to other trucks, which will disrupt the normal routes
of those trucks (mura) and doubtless cause them to burn more gas and
wear out brake pads faster due to the added weight and extra time
spent on the road (muda).
c)
You need to write a 10,000-word document in 20 working days and you
plan to do all of this in one night. The unrealistic burden of one
night's stress is muri. The unevenness of the process (19 days of no
writing, then one day of frantic writing) is mura. The sheer
wastefulness of spending a disproportionate amount of time on research
(allowing only a tiny amount of time for actual writing) is muda.
d)
All of the above.


29. Which of the following statements can be understood from the passage?
a)
A feature of 'Just in Time (JIT)' is that production of goods is not
delayed but defects and flaws of the product are not detected.
b)
The blank in the third paragraph can be completed by − The muda and
mura inconsistencies must be fed back to the muri, or planning stage
for the next project.
c)
A key distinction between non-value adding work and waste is that the
former is unavoidable and can be classified as Mura whereas the latter
is avoidable and can be classified as Muda.
d)
A key distinction between non-value adding work and waste is that the
former is a result of poor planning whereas the latter is a result of
poor implementation.

30. Given below are sets of examples (some of which may be
inappropriate) for each of the three types of wastes as discussed in
the passage.

Muda − (a) Using an excess of laundry detergent while doing a load of
laundry; (b) Inventory of final stock goes up and it needs additional
storage space; (c) Inventory piling up long before it is needed for
the next process.

Mura − (a) Henry Ford standardised on one colour of paint (black, the
fastest to dry) to eliminate waste on the assembly line caused by
uneven drying times of paints; (b) In a production process where a
department's performance is measured by monthly output, the department
rushes like mad in the final week of the month to meet targets, and
operates considerably slowly in the first week or two.

Muri − (a) Putting two tons of cargo in a truck designed to carry one
ton; (b) Improvising production methods and stretching processes with
a view to achieve the set targets; (c) Planning production targets in
excess of actual demand.

Choose the option corresponding to the wastes for which ALL examples
are correctly mentioned.
a)
muri, mura and muda
b)
mura and muri
c)
muda and mura
d)
muri and muda


Organic evolution is a process entirely materialistic in its origin
and operation, although no explicit conclusion was made or considered
possible as to the origin of the laws and properties of matter in
general under which organic evolution operates. Man arose as a result
of the operation of organic evolution and his being and activities are
also materialistic, but the human species has properties unique to
itself among all forms of life, superadded to the properties unique to
life among all forms of matter and of action. Man's intellectual,
social, and spiritual natures are altogether exceptional among animals
in degree, but they arose by organic evolution. They usher in a new
phase of evolution, and not a new phase merely but also a new kind,
which is thus also a product of organic evolution and can be no less
materialistic in its essence even though its organization and
activities are essentially different from those in the process that
brought it into being. The objective phenomena of the history of life
can be explained by purely materialistic factors − on the basis of
differential reproduction in populations (main factor in the modern
conception of natural selection) and of the mainly random interplay of
the known process of hereditary.

Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did
not have him in mind. Man was not planned. He is a state of matter, a
form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates,
akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is
material. It is, however, a gross misrepresentation to say that he is
just an accident or nothing but an animal. Among all the myriad forms
of matter and of life on earth or as far as we know in the universe,
man is unique. He happens to represent the highest form of
organization of matter and energy that has ever appeared. Among the
many different lines that show progress, the line leading to man
reaches much the highest level yet developed. Recognition of this
kinship with the rest of the universe is necessary for understanding
him, but his essential nature is defined by qualities found nowhere
else, not by those he has in common with apes, fishes, trees, fires or
anything other than himself.

It is part of this unique status that in man a new form of evolution
begins, overlying and largely dominating the old, organic evolution
which nevertheless also continues in him. This new form of evolution
works in the social structure, as the old evolution does in the
breeding population structure, and it depends on learning, the
inheritance of knowledge, as the old does on physical inheritance. Its
possibility arises from man's intelligence and associated flexibility
of response. His reactions depend far less than other organisms' on
physically inherited factors, far more on learning and on perception
of immediate and of new situations.

This flexibility brings with it the power and need for constant choice
between different courses of action. Man plans and has purposes. Plan,
purpose, goal, all absent in evolution to this point, enter with the
coming of man and are inherent in the new evolution, which is confined
to him. With these comes the need for criteria of choice. Good and
evil, right and wrong, concepts largely irrelevant in nature except
from the human viewpoint, become real and pressing features of the
whole cosmos as viewed by man − the only possible way in which the
cosmos can be viewed morally because morals arise only in man.

The discovery that the universe, apart from man or before his coming,
lacked any purpose or plan, has the inevitable corollary that the
workings of the Universe cannot provide any automatic universal,
eternal, or absolute ethical criteria of right and wrong. This
discovery has completely undermined all older attempts to find an
intuitive ethic or to accept such an ethic as revelation. It equally
undermines attempts to find a naturalistic ethic which will flow with
absolute validity from the workings of nature or of evolution as a new
revelation. Such attempts, arising from discovery of the baselessness
of intuitive ethics, have commonly fallen into the same mistake of
seeking an absolute ethic or one outside of man's own nature and have
then been doomed to failure by their own premises.

31. Among all the myriad forms of matter and life, man is unique. How?
a)
Man was not planned, he is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort
of animal and a species of the order of Primates. Man also shares a
kinship with the rest of the universe.
b)
Man happens to represent the most highly endowed organization of
matter that has yet appeared on earth and there is no good reason to
believe there is any higher in the universe. Also morals arise only in
man.
c)
Man is not necessarily among the higher animals.
d)
Man did originate after a tremendously long sequence of events in
which both chance and orientation played a role.

32. How according to the passage can the history of life be explained
by purely materialistic factors?
a)
Man was certainly not the goal of evolution which evidently had no goals.
b)
Discovery of genetic facts integrated with knowledge of life from
other fields of study has produced a materialistic theory that no
longer gives motive for vitalistic or finalistic theories.
c)
On the basis of differential reproduction in populations and the
mainly random interplay of the known process of hereditary.
d)
Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did
not have him in mind.

33. Which of the following is definitely incorrect about the older
phase or organic form of evolution?
a)
This form of evolution depends on learning, the inheritance of
knowledge. Plans, purposes and goals are inherent in it.
b)
It determines genetic differences, mutations and inheritance and helps
in perception of immediate and of new situations.
c)
It depends on physical inheritance and works in breeding population structure.
d)
The old organic form of evolution also continues in man.

34. Which phenomenon has undermined all older attempts to find an
intuitive ethic or revelation?
a)
A naturalistic ethic, drawing validity from the workings of Nature of evolution.
b)
The discovery that the Universe without or prior to the advent of man
lacked any purpose or plan and attempts at seeking an absolute ethic,
outside man's own nature.
c)
The discovery of the groundlessness of intuitive ethic.
d)
Purpose and plan are characteristic in social evolution because man
has purposes and he makes plans.