It can be inferred from the passage that to the author man' s need to know is chiefly important in that it ______.

A．The Byzantine Empire was a unique case in which the usual order of military and economic revival preceding cultural revival was reversed.
B．The economic, cultural, and military revival in the Byzantine Empire between the eighth and eleventh centuries was similar in its order to the sequence of revivals in August Rome and fifth - century Athens.
C．The revival of the Byzantine Empire between the eighth and eleventh centuries shows cultural rebirth preceding economic and military revival, the reverse of the commonly accepted order of progress.
D．The eighth -century revival of Byzantine learning is an inexplic,~ ie phenomenon, and its economic and military precursors have yet to be discovered.

A．revolutionary and too new to have been applied to the history of the Byzantine Empire
B．reasonable, but an antiquated theory of the nature of progress
C．not applicable to the Byzantine revival as a whole, but does perhaps accurately describe limited periods during the revival
D．essentially not helpful, because military, economic, and cultural advances are part of a single phenomenon