PSI Main 2013 - Paper 1

(For Questions 96 to 100)

Read the following passage and answer questions 96 to 100:
Everyone likes to blame his sense of defeat on someone else; and for some time scientists have been a favourite scapegoat. I want to look at their responsibility, and for that matter at everybody's rather closely. They do have a special responsibility; but it is a complicated one, and not the whole responsibility. For example, science obviously is not responsible for the readiness of people, who do not take their private quarrels beyond the stage of insult. to carry their public quarrels to the point of war. Many animals fight for their needs, and some for their mere greed, to the point of death. Bucks fight for females, and birds fight for their territories. The fighting habits of man are odd because he displays them only in groups. But they were not supplied by scientists. On the contrary, science has helped to end several kinds of group murder, such as witch hunting and the taboos of the early nineteenth century against disinfecting hospitals.

Neither is science responsible for the existence of groups which believe themselves to be in competition, for the existence, above all, of nations. And the threat of war today is always a national threat. Some bone of contention and competition is identified with a national good, and in the end nations are willing to organize and to invite the death of citizens on both sides in order to reach these collective aims. Science did not create the nations - on the contrary, it has helped to soften those strong national idiosyncrasies which it seems necessary to exploit if war is to be made with enthusiasm.

The sense of doom in us today is not a fear of science; it is a fear of war. And the causes of war were not created by science. No, science has not invented war; but it has turned it into a very different thing. Science has enlarged the mechanism of war, and it has distorted it.

(For Questions 96 to 100)

Read the following passage and answer questions 96 to 100:
           Everyone likes to blame his sense of defeat on someone else; and for some time scientists have been a favourite scapegoat. I want to look at their responsibility, and for that matter at everybody's rather closely. They do have a special responsibility; but it is a complicated one, and not the whole responsibility. For example, science obviously is not responsible for the readiness of people, who do not take their private quarrels beyond the stage of insult. to carry their public quarrels to the point of war. Many animals fight for their needs, and some for their mere greed, to the point of death. Bucks fight for females, and birds fight for their territories. The fighting habits of man are odd because he displays them only in groups. But they were not supplied by scientists. On the contrary, science has helped to end several kinds of group murder, such as witch hunting and the taboos of the early nineteenth century against disinfecting hospitals.

         Neither is science responsible for the existence of groups which believe themselves to be in competition, for the existence, above all, of nations. And the threat of war today is always a national threat. Some bone of contention and competition is identified with a national good, and in the end nations are willing to organize and to invite the death of citizens on both sides in order to reach these collective aims. Science did not create the nations - on the contrary, it has helped to soften those strong national idiosyncrasies which it seems necessary to exploit if war is to be made with enthusiasm.

           The sense of doom in us today is not a fear of science; it is a fear of war. And the causes of war were not created by science. No, science has not invented war; but it has turned it into a very different thing. Science has enlarged the mechanism of war, and it has distorted it.