CAT Previous Year Questions

According to the passage, the most revolutionary feature of Sapiens language is

The author uses the example of the monkey and bananas primarily to

The author suggests that the rise of large-scale Sapiens cooperation was possible because

Which of the following best captures the author's attitude towards the role of fiction in human civilisation?

Which of the following best summarises the central argument of the passage?

According to Kant, what rescues the observer from the initial feeling of inadequacy produced by the sublime?

The critics mentioned in the final paragraph would most likely agree with which statement?

Based on Burke's account, which of the following would most likely produce the sublime?

Jacobs's criticism of mid-century urban planning was primarily directed at its

The 'irony' the author refers to in the final sentence is best described as

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen Florida's critics' position?

The author's view of scientific knowledge is best described as

Kuhn's concept of 'incommensurability' implies that

The author cites bridges, antibiotics and satellites primarily to counter

The author's statement that the partiality of human knowledge is 'not a deficiency; it is the very condition that makes knowledge possible' is closest in spirit to which of the following ideas?

The sentences below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Find the correct order. A. The invention of agriculture, paradoxically, made the average farmer worse off than the average hunter-gatherer. B. Yet agriculture triumphed because it allowed a given area of land to support far more people. C. Hunter-gatherers worked fewer hours, ate a more varied diet, and suffered fewer diseases. D. The question of why humans adopted farming despite its costs has puzzled historians for generations. E. The answer lies not in individual welfare but in collective population dynamics.

The sentences below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Find the correct order. A. This feedback loop makes it almost impossible to step outside one's own cultural assumptions. B. Culture shapes the categories through which we perceive the world. C. What seems natural and obvious to a person raised in one culture will seem bizarre or wrong to someone raised in another. D. And those categories in turn determine what evidence we consider relevant and what we overlook. E. Anthropologists call this 'ethnocentrism'—the tendency to interpret the world through the lens of one's own culture.

The sentences below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Find the correct order. A. Its roots lie in the medieval Islamic world, where scholars translated and extended Greek mathematical texts. B. Algebra is often presented as a purely European achievement of the Renaissance. C. Al-Khwarizmi's ninth-century treatise gave algebra both its name and its systematic foundations. D. This narrative erases one of the most important intellectual traditions of the pre-modern world. E. When Latin translations of his work reached Europe centuries later, they transformed European mathematics.

Choose the option that best summarises the following paragraph. "The rise of social media has not simply given everyone a voice—it has given some voices a megaphone while reducing others to whispers. Algorithms designed to maximise engagement systematically amplify outrage, novelty and tribal confirmation. The result is not a richer public sphere but a polarised one in which the loudest and most extreme voices crowd out the moderate and the nuanced. Democracy requires not just freedom of speech but the conditions under which citizens can actually hear and evaluate one another's arguments."