SAT Critical Reding Question

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1

Hi guys!
The passage is:
As with so many endeavors, nature writing has become increasingly specialized. There has been a generally healthy movement from anthropocentric to the biocentric, from human focused to world focused, a movement that Thoreau anticipated late in his life with his more scientific writing. This movement has led to some fine objective writing, but it has also led to many dull pages, exhaustive and, occasionally, exhausting works. The problem is that readers are human beings and therefore naturally interested n the human. The driving youthful question that enlivened Thoreau’s Walden-How to Live?- has been all but forgotten.

The author would most likely characterize Walden as:
(A) dry and boring
(B) appropriately scientific
© long and exhausting to read
(D) more about literature than people
(E) fundamentally human centered

The answer is E, but I’m not sure why. Can someone explain it to me?

2

The author states that the movement has been FROM anthropocentric (human-focused) TO biocentric (world-focused). Then in the end she writes that the question from Walden “has been all but forgotten.” That places Walden in the past, aligning it with the anthropocentric view that nature writing has moved away from.
@priyagupta
Hope this helps.

3

Um I have one problem in the same question. When the passage says that the readers are interested in the human based writings, why would Walden(human focused) be forgotten.

4

He has been “all but forgotten” .There’s a difference @Indrachowk

5

Because WRITERS aren’t WRITING from a human-focused perspective anymore. Walden was a long time ago, and that style has been mostly (“all but”) forgotten.