Study guide
This chapter is educational content only and is not affiliated with or endorsed by AAMC; sample passages here are wholly original and written to mirror the reasoning skills the section rewards, not to reproduce any specific test item. CARS presents passages from the humanities and social sciences and asks three kinds of questions: comprehension of what the passage states, reasoning within the text (drawing inferences the author implies but does not state outright), and reasoning beyond the text (applying the passage's logic to new situations or evaluating its claims). No prior subject knowledge is assumed; the passage itself must supply every fact you need.
Passage 1: History and Philosophy of Science
For much of the nineteenth century, the practice of science was described, by scientists and philosophers alike, as a steady accumulation of facts: observe carefully, record faithfully, and truth would eventually assemble itself. The historian and philosopher Thomas Kuhn challenged this picture in the mid-twentieth century, arguing that science does not progress by simple addition but by a rhythm of stability and rupture. Within what Kuhn called a paradigm, a shared framework of theory, method, and assumption, researchers engage in what he termed normal science: solving puzzles the paradigm itself defines as worth solving, using tools the paradigm supplies. Anomalies, observations the paradigm cannot easily accommodate, accumulate quietly at first, often dismissed as measurement error or set aside for later. Only when anomalies become numerous or troubling enough does a crisis emerge, and out of that crisis a new paradigm may arise, one that redefines not just the answers but the questions worth asking. Kuhn called this a scientific revolution, and he was careful to insist that successive paradigms are not simply better approximations of a fixed truth; they are, in a strong sense, incommensurable, meaning they cannot be fully translated into each other's terms, because the very concepts and standards of evidence have shifted. Critics have pushed back on this last point, worried that if paradigms are truly incommensurable, science loses any rational basis for judging one framework superior to another, reducing scientific change to something more like a conversion experience than a reasoned choice. Kuhn's defenders respond that shared values, such as accuracy, consistency, and fruitfulness, persist across paradigm shifts even when specific theories do not, giving scientists reasoned, if not algorithmic, grounds for choosing a new framework over an old one. Whatever one concludes, the debate reframed a basic question: is scientific knowledge a mirror held up to nature, or a map redrawn each time the terrain is reconceived?
Questions 1-4 (Passage 1)
1. (Comprehension) According to the passage, 'normal science' refers to: (A) science conducted without any theoretical framework (B) puzzle-solving within an established paradigm's own terms (C) the process of discovering entirely new paradigms (D) the accumulation of anomalies. The passage explicitly defines normal science as puzzle-solving that a paradigm 'itself defines as worth solving,' so (B) is correct; (A), (C), and (D) each describe something else the passage discusses. 2. (Reasoning within the text) The passage suggests that anomalies alone are not sufficient to produce a scientific revolution because: (A) anomalies are always proven to be measurement errors (B) a revolution requires anomalies to accumulate or become troubling enough to provoke a crisis (C) paradigms never change (D) anomalies are ignored by all scientists. The passage states anomalies 'accumulate quietly at first' and only produce crisis, and then possible revolution, once they become 'numerous or troubling enough,' supporting (B); the passage does not claim anomalies are always dismissed as error (A overstates this) or that paradigms never change (C contradicts the passage). 3. (Reasoning within the text) The critics' objection mentioned in the passage is best described as a concern that: (A) Kuhn's theory makes paradigm shifts irrational or arbitrary (B) Kuhn ignored the existence of anomalies (C) Kuhn overstated the stability of normal science (D) Kuhn's theory cannot explain why revolutions occur. The passage states critics worry incommensurability makes paradigm change 'something more like a conversion experience than a reasoned choice,' which is a claim about irrationality, matching (A). 4. (Reasoning beyond the text) Suppose a group of researchers switches from one accepted theory to a competing one after a controlled experiment produces a small, easily explained deviation from prediction. Based on the passage's account of Kuhn's model, this scenario: (A) is a clear example of a Kuhnian scientific revolution (B) does not fit the passage's description of a revolution, since a single minor, easily explained anomaly is not described as sufficient to provoke a paradigm crisis (C) proves paradigms are incommensurable (D) shows that normal science does not exist. Because the passage ties revolutions to accumulated or troubling anomalies provoking crisis, a single minor and 'easily explained' deviation does not fit that description, making (B) correct; this question requires applying the passage's stated criteria to a new scenario rather than recalling a stated fact.
Passage 2: Visual Art Criticism
When a viewer stands before a large abstract canvas and reports feeling nothing beyond mild confusion, the critic's first instinct is often to explain, as though incomprehension were a gap in information rather than a legitimate response demanding its own account. Yet abstraction, from its early twentieth-century advocates onward, was rarely conceived as a puzzle to be solved by explanation; it was conceived as an experience to be undergone. Wassily Kandinsky, among the movement's earliest theorists, argued that color and form could function like musical notes, producing an emotional resonance directly, without the mediation of recognizable subject matter. On this view, a canvas of interlocking blue and ochre shapes is not a failed attempt at representing something; it is a composition whose 'content' simply is the relationship among its formal elements, and asking 'what is it a painting of' misapplies a question suited to representational art. Critics sympathetic to this formalist position, most notably Clement Greenberg writing at mid-century, went further, arguing that each artistic medium should pursue what is unique to it: painting's essential properties are flatness and the shape of the support, and modern painting's historical task was to purify itself of borrowed effects, such as the illusion of three-dimensional depth, that properly belong to sculpture. This purist argument has drawn sustained objection. Some critics contend that Greenberg's account, by treating medium-purity as painting's proper destiny, quietly smuggled in a value judgment, ranking abstraction above representational or narrative art on formal grounds alone, as though a painting's capacity to depict a specific historical moment, a grieving family, or a contested landscape were an impurity rather than a legitimate purpose in its own right. Others note that Kandinsky's own writings freely invoke spiritual and emotional vocabulary that formalist criticism, focused strictly on line, color, and shape, tends to set aside, suggesting that even abstraction's founding theorist saw form as a vehicle for meaning beyond the arrangement of shapes alone, not an end that made meaning irrelevant.
Questions 1-4 (Passage 2)
1. (Comprehension) Per the passage, Kandinsky compared color and form to: (A) written language (B) mathematical proofs (C) musical notes (D) photographic images. The passage states Kandinsky argued color and form 'could function like musical notes,' directly supporting (C). 2. (Reasoning within the text) The passage implies that asking 'what is it a painting of' about an abstract work is, on the formalist view, a mistake because: (A) abstract paintings are always titled (B) the question assumes a representational purpose that abstraction does not share (C) formalists believe all paintings depict something (D) Kandinsky rejected the use of color entirely. The passage states this question 'misapplies a question suited to representational art,' implying the question wrongly assumes representational intent, matching (B). 3. (Reasoning within the text) Based on the passage, the objection to Greenberg's position centers on the claim that: (A) Greenberg ignored color theory (B) treating medium-purity as painting's proper aim implicitly ranks abstraction over other legitimate purposes of painting (C) Greenberg admired representational art above abstraction (D) flatness is not a real property of canvases. The passage states critics believe Greenberg's account 'quietly smuggled in a value judgment, ranking abstraction above representational or narrative art,' directly supporting (B). 4. (Reasoning beyond the text) A critic who agrees with the passage's closing point about Kandinsky's own writings would most likely respond to a strict formalist analysis of a Kandinsky painting (one that discusses only line, color, and shape) by arguing that: (A) the analysis is complete because form is all that matters (B) the analysis overlooks a spiritual or emotional dimension the artist himself considered essential to the work's meaning (C) the analysis proves formalism is correct (D) Kandinsky would have approved of a purely formal reading. Since the passage notes Kandinsky's writings 'freely invoke spiritual and emotional vocabulary' that strict formalism 'tends to set aside,' a critic following this reasoning would say a purely formal analysis misses that dimension, supporting (B); this applies the passage's stated tension to a new hypothetical critical exercise.
Key terms
- Paradigm (Kuhn)
- — A shared framework of theory, method, and assumption within which normal science operates, per historian Thomas Kuhn.
- Normal science
- — Kuhn's term for puzzle-solving research conducted within an accepted paradigm's own questions and methods.
- Incommensurability
- — Kuhn's claim that successive scientific paradigms cannot be fully translated into each other's terms because core concepts and standards shift.
- Scientific revolution (Kuhn)
- — A shift from one paradigm to another, typically following a crisis produced by accumulated or troubling anomalies.
- Formalism (art criticism)
- — A critical approach evaluating artwork chiefly by its formal elements (line, color, shape, composition) rather than subject matter.
- Medium specificity (Greenberg)
- — Clement Greenberg's argument that each art form should pursue qualities unique to its medium, such as flatness in painting.
- Comprehension question (CARS)
- — A CARS question type asking what the passage directly states, answerable by locating explicit text.
- Reasoning-within-the-text question
- — A CARS question type requiring an inference the author implies through structure, tone, or emphasis but does not state outright.
- Reasoning-beyond-the-text question
- — A CARS question type requiring application of the passage's logic or claims to a new scenario, or evaluation of the argument's strength.
Exam tips
- Answer strictly from the passage, not outside knowledge of the subject — a choice that is true in the real world but unsupported by the text is a trap answer.
- For reasoning-within-the-text questions, find the specific sentence that licenses the inference before selecting an answer; if you cannot point to it, reconsider the choice.
- For reasoning-beyond-the-text questions, restate the passage's own criteria or argument first, then check which answer choice actually satisfies those criteria in the new scenario.
- Eliminate answer choices with extreme language ('always,' 'never,' 'proves') unless the passage itself uses similarly strong language to support that reading.
- Track the author's own stance versus the views the author merely describes or attributes to others — many wrong answers confuse a cited critic's opinion with the author's own conclusion.