ACCORDING TO THE PASSAGE, AN INDIVIDUAL MAYE. IN SOCIAL TERMS, HUMA...

3. According to the passage, an individual maye. in social terms, humankind is not univer-fail to understand the comic becausesally connected.I. the comic does not mesh with specific cus-toms and ideas of his or her society.II. the individual feels apart from theintended audience.III. laughter is an isolated phenomenon.a. II onlyb. III onlyc. I and II onlyd. II and III onlye. I, II, and III

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T H E G R E V E R B A L S E C T I O N

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Geometry sets out from certain conceptions such as “plane,”“point,” and “straight line,” withwhich we are able to associate more or less definite ideas, and from certain simple propositions(axioms) which, in virtue of these ideas, we are inclined to accept as “true.” Then, on the basisof a logical process, the justification of which we feel ourselves compelled to admit, all remain-ing propositions are shown to follow from those axioms, i.e., they are proven. A proposition is(5)then correct (“true”) when it has been derived in the recognized manner from the axioms. Thequestion of “truth” of the individual geometrical propositions is thus reduced to one of the“truth” of the axioms. Now it has long been known that the last question is not only unanswer-able by the methods of geometry, but that it is in itself entirely without meaning. We cannotask whether it is true that only one straight line goes through two points. We can only say that(10)Euclidean geometry deals with things called “straight lines,” to each of which is ascribed theproperty of being uniquely determined by two points situated on it. The concept “true” doesnot tally with the assertions of pure geometry, because by the word “true,” we are eventually inthe habit of designating always the correspondence with a “real” object; geometry, however, isnot concerned with the relation of the ideas involved in it to objects of experience, but only(15)with the logical connection of these ideas among themselves.It is not difficult to understand why, in spite of this, we feel constrained to call the propo-sitions of geometry “true.” Geometrical ideas correspond to more or less exact objects innature, and these last are undoubtedly the exclusive cause of the genesis of those ideas.Geometry ought to refrain from such a course, in order to give to its structure the largest(20)possible logical unity. The practice, for example, of seeing in a “distance” two marked posi-tions on a practically rigid body is something that is lodged deeply in our habit of thought.We are accustomed further to regard three points as being situated on a straight line if theirapparent positions can be made to coincide for observation with one eye under suitablechoice of our place of observation.(25)