12.Practice.Tests.for.the.SAT_2015-2016_1128p

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Section 7
Practice Test Seven
Directions: The passages below are followed by questions based on their content; questions following a pair of related
passages may also be based on the relationship between the paired passages. Answer the questions on the basis of
what is stated or implied in the passages and in any introductory material that may be provided.
Questions 7-19 are based on the following passages.
The following passages present two views of the genius
of Leonardo da Vinci. Passage 1 emphasizes Leonardo's
fundamentally artistic sensibility. Passage 2 offers a
defense of his technological achievements.
Passage I
What a marvelous and celestial creature was
Leonardo da Vinci. As a scientist and engineer, his
gifts were unparalleled. But his accomplishments
Line in these capacities were hindered by the fact that
(5) he was, before all else, an artist. As one conversant
with the perfection of art, and knowing the futility
of trying to bring such perfection to the realm
of practical application, Leonardo tended toward
variability and inconstancy in his endeavors. His
( 10) practice of moving compulsively from one project
to the next, never bringing any of them to completion,
stood in the way of his making any truly
useful technical advances.
When Leonardo was asked to create a memorial
(15) for one of his patrons, he designed a bronze horse
of such vast proportions that it proved utterly
impractical-even impossible-to produce. Some
historians maintain that Leonardo never had any
intention of finishing this work in the first place.
(20) But it is more likely that he simply became so
intoxicated by his grand artistic conception that
he lost sight of the fact that the monument
actually had to be cast. Similarly, when Leonardo
was commissioned to paint the Last Supper, he left
(25) the head of Christ unfinished, feeling incapable of
investing it with a sufficiently divine demeanor.
Yet, as a work of art rather than science or engineering,
it is still worthy of our greatest veneration,
for Leonardo succeeded brilliantly in captur-
(30) ing the acute anxiety of the Apostles at the most
dramatic moment of the Passion narrative.
Such mental restlessness, however, proved more
problematic when applied to scientific matters.
When he turned his mind to the natural world,
(35) Leonardo would begin by inquiring into the properties
of herbs and end up observing the motions of
the heavens. In his technical studies and scientific
experiments, he would generate an endless stream
of models and drawings, designing complex and
( 40) unbuildable machines to raise great weights, bore
through mountains, or even empty harbors.
It is this enormous intellectual fertility that has
suggested to many that Leonardo can and should
be regarded as one of the originators of modern
( 45) science. But Leonardo was not himself a true scientist.
"Science" is not the hundred-odd principles
or pensieri' that have been pulled out of his Codici.
Science is comprehensive and methodical thought.
Granted, Leonardo always became fascinated by
(50) the intricacies of specific technical challenges.
He possessed the artist's interest in detail, which
explains his compulsion with observation and
problem solving. However, such things alone do
not constitute science, which requires the working
(55) out of a systematic body of knowledge-something
Leonardo displayed little interest in doing.
Passage 2
'pensieri: (Italian) thoughts
As varied as Leonardo's interests were, analysis
of his writings points to technology as his
main concern. There is hardly a field of applied
(60) mechanics that Leonardo's searching mind did
not touch upon in his notebooks. Yet some of his
biographers have actually expressed regret that
such a man, endowed with divine artistic genius,
would "waste" precious years of his life on such a
(65) "lowly" pursuit as engineering.
To appreciate Leonardo's contribution to technology,
one need only examine his analysis of
the main problem of technology-the harnessing
of energy to perform useful work. In Leonardo's
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