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Comprehension from past paper 2015
Q.3. Read the following text carefully and answer the questions below: (20)
Experience has quite definitely shown that some reasons for holding a belief are much more likely to be justified by the event then others. It might naturally be supposed, for instance, that the best of all reasons for a belief was a strong conviction of certainty accompanying the belief. Experience, however, shows that this is not so, and that as a matter of fact, conviction by itself is more likely to mislead than it is to guarantee truth. On the other hand, lack of assurance and persistent hesitation to come to any belief whatever are an equally poor guarantee that the few beliefs which are arrived at are sound. Experience also shows that assertion, however long continued, although it is unfortunately with many people an effective enough means of inducing belief, is not an any way a ground for holding it.
The method which has proved effective, as a matter of actual fact, in providing of firm foundation for belief wherever it has been capable of application, is what is usually called the scientific method. I firmly believe that the scientific method, although slow and never claiming to lead to complete truth, is the only method which in the long run will give satisfactory foundations for beliefs. It consists in demanding facts as the only basis for conclusions, and inconsistently and continuously testing any conclusions which may have been reached, against the test of new facts and, wherever possible, by the crucial test of experiment. It consists also in full publication of the evidence on which conclusions are based, so that other workers may be assisted in new researchers, or enabled to develop their own interpretations and arrive at possibly very different conclusions.
There are, however, all sorts of occasions on which the scientific method is not applicable. That method involves slow testing, frequent suspension of judgment, restricted conclusions. The exigencies of everyday life, on the other hand, often make it necessary to act on a hasty balancing of admittedly incomplete evidence, to take immediate action, and to draw conclusions in advance of evidence. It is also true that such action will always be necessary, and necessary in respect of ever larger issues; and this inspite of the fact that one of the most important trends of civilization is to remove sphere after sphere of life out of the domain of such intuitive judgment into the domain of rigid calculation based on science. It is here that belief pays its most important role. When we cannot be certain, we must proceed in part by faith-faith not only in the validity of our own capacity of making judgments, but also in the existence of certain other realities, pre-eminently moral and spiritual realities. It has been said that faith consists in acting always on the nobler hypothesis; and though this definition is a trifle rhetorical, it embodies a seed of real truth.
Answer briefly in your own words the following questions:

1. Give the meaning of the underlined phrases as they are used in the passage. (04)
Ans:I could not found out any. Moreover,what would be the way to answer this Qestion..
2. What justification does the author claim for his belief in the scientific method? (04)
Ans: The author’s belief in the scientific method is justified by his claim for empirical evidences based on sound judgment and experimentation of facts to reach upon conclusions. Instead of having a fake assertion, he said, of holding a belief for a long time without guaranteed truth, the scientific method gradually leads us to the actual and complete truth and modify our beliefs. It is the method that have strong basis for what we believe to be true.
3. Do you gather from the passage that conclusions reached by the scientific method should we considered final? Give reasons for your answer.(04)
Ans: Conclusions reached by the scientific method should not be considered final because either they develop new facts based on the previous evidences or falsify them with the same method of scientific experimentation by the other researchers to reach at the dissimilar conclusion.
4. In what circumstances, according to the author, is it necessary to abandon the scientific method? (04)
Ans: According to the author, scientific method cannot be necessarily applied to each and everything that happens. This includes occasional judgments, abstract conclusions and events of our everyday lives that demands quick responses needed to be logically assessed, carried out and implemented before arriving at empirical conclusions.
5. How does the basis of “intuitive judgment” differ from the scientific decision? (04)
Ans: Some events and issues requires intuitive judgments rather than scientific decisions to draw conclusions. We make judgments when we are uncertain about a particular thing from the very first and then evaluate them. On the contrary, the scientific decisions possess rigidity and are restricted to assess our values, culture, and the process of civilization, morality, spirituality and nobility which is the pivotal element of difference that separates intuitive judgment from scientific decisions.