MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SINGAPORE

in collaboration with
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE LOCAL EXAMINATIONS SYNDICATE
General Certificate of Education Advanced Level

KNOWLEDGE AND INQUIRY 9759/02

Higher 2

Paper 2 Critical Thinking

Specimen Paper for examination from 2007

2 hours
Additional Materials: Answer Booklet

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

Write your Centre Number, index number and name on all the work you hand in.
You may use a soft pencil for any diagrams, graphs or rough working.
Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.

Section A
Answer Question 1.

Section B
Answer any two questions.

At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
All questions in this paper carry equal marks.

. This document consists of 3 printed pages and 1 blank page.

'f~ Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board B UNIVERSITY of CAMBRIDGE
l
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9 International Examinations

© UCLES & MOE 2005 [Turn over

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Section A

You must answer Question 1.

1 On History

It will not come as news to a person who has reflected on the topic, that history contains errors.
History has been tampered with. The very first history, a Greek one, History of Herodotus, written
around 450 BC, probably contains fictional passages. There are also great gaps in our historical
knowledge. We have failed to record everything - especially the little human events which make up
the fabric of history.

History should be written in a livel"y and descriptive manner, to gratify our curiosity. It should teach us
how to interpret the present and future. As such, it is more important to us than fiction and ought to be
at the core of any scheme of education. History is the story of the collective self, the story of
passionate man. Fiction, coming as it does from the imagination of some fellow human being, does
not have the same attraction, simply because it is not true. What I need from my reading is that I learn
something and in history I do. t learn that while the ages and the settings change, the actors in history
are guided by the same passions of human nature. As Emerson wrote in his Essays: "Nature is an
endless combination and repetition of a few laws. She hums the old well-known air through
innumerable variations. 11

Not all of our histories are accurate records that, for good or bad, reflect the true course of events.
This could be, in certain instances, because the author was not as careful in his research, which, as
an historian, he must be; or, in other instances because the author has some ulterior motive: or,
simply because the writing of an accurate history is an impossibility.

At any rate, if one subscribes to the skeptical school, all knowledge is but a belief, an opinion, a
theory. And while it is so that nothing .is for sure, we must, nonetheless, proceed at some point to
classify certain of our theories as knowledge. What happens, in real science, in real life, is that we
build on our "knowledge" which, in the final analysis, is but a mass of theories that have been held up
and exposed to testing.

The history book might just be a re-write of a re-write. A history writer is bound to go back in his
research and dig out, if they exist, the original documents. On the other hand, contemporary history
writers, while fresh to the facts, are often influenced by contemporary pressures. Thus, a history may
therefore be wrong because it is based, either on the biases of the contemporary writers, or on the
inadequate or absent records used by future writers, or simply because it is an inadequate or an
improper mix of events. So, as one can see, the writing of history for a conscientious person
becomes, indeed! a most difficult task, one of synchronizing and synthesizing many different accounts
of the same and related events.
(Adapted from On History by Peter Landry)

The writer makes claims about the nature of historical knowledge. Discuss and evaluate the author's
claims, using your own understanding of the nature of historical knowledge as well as the ideas raised
by the author. [30]

© UCLES & MOE 2005 9759/02/SP0?

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Section B

Answer two questions.

2 There has been growing concern about the risk of the Earth being struck by an asteroid. In
particular, scientists are worried about an asteroid detected in 1997, known as 1997 XF 11.
The probability of this or another asteroid hitting the Earth before the end of the present
century was once put at 1500 to 1. However, scientists have recently re-assessed this risk and
now put th~ probability at 5000 to 1. Nevertheless, these are still higher odds than the risk of
an individual dying in a rail accident (1 in 20,000) or the risk of being struck by lightning (1 in
10 million). If such an impact occurred, there would be massive loss of life. Therefore the
probability of death through asteroid impact is greater than the risk of death through a rail
accident or being struck by lightning.

Explain why the conclusion in the argument could be questionable, even if the probabilities
quoted are accurate. [15]

3 "Suppose (as Aristotle believed) that the heavier a body is, the faster it falls to the ground and
suppose we have two bodies, a heavy one called M and a light one called m. Under our initial
assumption M will fall faster than m. Now suppose that M and m are joined together thus M +
m. Now what happens? Well M + m is heavier than M so by our initial assumption it should fall
faster than Malone. But in the joined body M + m, m and M will each tend to fall just as fast as
before they were joined, so m will act as a •brake' on M and M + m will fall slower than M
alone. Hence it follows from our initial assumption that M + m will fall both faster and slower
than Malone. Since this is absurd our initial assumption must be false."

Evaluate the argument presented by Galileo in response to Aristotle. [15]

4 Many scientists and philosophers now accept that the world (by which they mean the
universe) is just one of the many possible worlds which exist in some unobserved but
nonetheless real way. They have good grounds, for if this were the only possible world, our
descriptions of it - e.g. scientific observations - would be meaningless. A meaningful
description has to identify what is special about the thing being described, and that
necessitates the existence of other things that are similar in one or more ways but different in
one or more others. If the only thing that existed was a left-handed glove, it would mean
nothing to say it was left~handed, as that would not make it special. The very fact that we can
and do meaningfully describe our world requires that other, different worlds exist, at least in
the realm of possibility. They may even be as real as the one we call 'ours'.

Is the writer justified in claiming that unless there were other possible worlds, we would not be
able to meaningfully describe the actual one? Is the analogy he uses of the left.. handed glove
helpful or convincing? [15J

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BLANK PAGE

Question I 0 Peter Landry www.blupete.com

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9759/02/SP0?