twists

Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for, the experimental philosophy of the female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of her system; for at the very moment when the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food.

What is the narrator’s purpose in bringing up the other experimental philosopher in the second paragraph?

Give an example of how other organisms can in fact survive on near-starvation diets.

Bring light to the fact of an ironic situation.

Support of the superintendent

Give a scientific perspective

Introduce sarcasm