Structural Historian: The catastrophic 1402 collapse of the Vesper Basilica’s central dome has traditionally been attributed to the master builder’s reliance on inferior, highly porous limestone. However, contemporary diffractometry analysis of the surviving rubble demonstrates that the limestone employed actually possessed the maximum compressive strength of any quarried stone available in that region during the fifteenth century. Because the builder utilized the optimal masonry materials available to him, the collapse must have been the direct result of a fundamental miscalculation in the geometric proportions of the dome’s supporting buttresses.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the structural historian's argument depends?
- AThe contemporary diffractometry analysis was not flawed by potential alterations to the limestone's chemical structure over the past six centuries.
- BThe traditional attribution of the collapse to highly porous limestone was based entirely on written records rather than physical inspections of the rubble by earlier historians.
- The structural design of the Vesper Basilica’s dome did not require masonry possessing a compressive strength greater than the maximum available in the region during the fifteenth century.Cevap
- DIf a fifteenth-century dome collapses despite the use of optimal masonry materials, the direct cause is always a miscalculation in the geometric proportions of its buttresses.
- EThere were no other master builders in the fifteenth century who possessed a superior understanding of geometric proportions than the builder of the Vesper Basilica.