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Odd Sentence Out/Set 1 · Q20

Question

Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out and key in the number of that sentence.

Sentences

1

Early-twentieth-century museums of natural history were organised on the conviction that arranging specimens by morphological similarity would make evolutionary relationships visible to any attentive observer.

2

This conviction reflected a faith, common to the period, that the right ordering of objects could

substitute for explicit theoretical commentary, which would have seemed didactic.

3

Visitors were therefore presented with rows of beetles and birds whose meaning, curators

believed, would be inferred from the very fact of their arrangement.

4

Modern museum design increasingly favours interactive screens that allow visitors to customise

the level of detail they encounter.

5

The implicit theory of viewing was that the eye, properly guided by sequence, would discover

relationships without being told what to find.

Detailed solution

Q20. Answer: 4. Sentences 1, 2, 3, and 5 form a coherent paragraph about early-twentieth-century museum theory: the conviction that arrangement could substitute for explicit theory (1, 2), the practical consequence (3), and the underlying theory of viewing (5). Sentence 4 is on the same broad theme (museum design) but shifts to modern interactive screens and visitor customisation, which belongs to a different stage of argument. The oddness is structural, not topical.