ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Good and Evil. But, let's be real here... mostly Evil.

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In line 40, the word "piecemeal" is BEST

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interpreted to mean... what? And here are the potential answers...

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Hm... well, if we're not sure what piecemeal is... it certainly sounds delicious.

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Although... the "piece" part of it makes it sound like it might not be that filling...

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so we hope it tides us over until dinner... But yeah, let's assume we don't know what

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the word means, and it's just... unnecessarily whetting our appetite.

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Let's take a look at the line in question and see if we can figure out what the word means here.

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In fact, let's read the few lines after it as well, to get some sense of context...

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A truly scientific philosophy will be more humble, more piecemeal, more arduous, offering

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less glitter of outward mirage to flatter fallacious hopes, but more indifferent to

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fate, and more capable of accepting the world without the tyrannous imposition of our human

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and temporary demands. All right, so... what are we talking about here?

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The author is saying that a "truly scientific philosophy" will be humble... we should

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know that one, it basically means meek or modest...

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...piecemeal -- our mystery word...

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...and arduous. The "ard" part sounds like "hard"... and indeed, that's roughly

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what the word means. Something grueling and difficult. Like working our way through this question.

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The author goes on to say that it will be

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"capable of accepting the world without the tyrannous imposition of our human and

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temporary demands."

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In other words... we human beings want immediate gratification -- we want our answers and

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we want them now.

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But the "scientific philosophy" shouldn't have to put with us and our silly demands.

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It should be able to move at its own pace...

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...modestly, meekly, and in a grueling manner. Cobbling all this together... it seems that

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piecemeal probably means that something gets done a "piece" at a time.

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And if you eat your meal a piece at a time, you will eat... slowly... gradually...

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Which is answer B.

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D is a nice try, but "unhurried" makes it seem like a leisurely stroll in the park...

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"Gradual" is much more on the nose.

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And none of the others come close... so yeah, B's our guy.

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And while it's nice to be careful and thorough, we don't recommend that you complete your

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AP test piecemeal.

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They frown on it when you leave midway through the test to grab a donut from 7-11.

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