Responses

The College invites written responses to any question in any paper.

The response required

A response is an argument, not a survey. Where the question admits a position, one is to be taken at the outset and defended to the end; where it demands a proof, a derivation, or a construction, that object is to be delivered, and commentary is no substitute for it. Provocations invite a disciplined essay; technical problems require correct, quantitative reasoning; interdisciplinary questions require two fields to be brought together; and the rubric of each paper binds every answer given under it.

The register is the College’s own, and it is double. A response must be exactly as technical as the question requires, and no more: mathematics where mathematics settles the matter, measurement where measurement does, plain argument everywhere else. Apparatus earns its place by doing work that prose cannot; apparatus that decorates is a fault. Yet the whole must remain open to the educated layman: the course of the argument — what is claimed, what it turns on, what would defeat it — should be followable by a reader outside the field, even where the verification of a step is not. A response only a specialist can follow has failed one requirement; a response a specialist would fault has failed the other.

A response may not exceed three thousand words, exclusive of equations, figures, tables, and references. The limit is a ceiling, not a target. Most questions are well answered in far less; brevity and concision are rewarded, and of two answers of equal force the shorter is judged the better. The College reads to the end of an argument. It does not mistake length for weight.

Submission

A response should identify its question by paper and number (for example, Paper III, Question 13). Responses are accepted in English, as plain text or PDF, by electronic mail to [email protected].

Every response is read. Those of sufficient merit are entered in the Register below, numbered in order of entry, and retained. Manent et numerantur: they remain, and they are counted.