#16 - Giordano Bruno, the Renaissance philosopher, must have been a spy for England

[flowskiferda]

This was the only question I got wrong in this section--I've looked at it for about 15 minutes now and have no clue how A is any better than E. The argument uses the fact that he was a clergyman to somehow advance the conclusion that he was a spy. Answer choice E introduces the possibility that he could've been working one of those roles and was not necessarily a spy. How does the fact he was excommunicated (answer choice A) have anything to do with anything?

[Beth Hayden]

Hi Flow,

Records show there was a spy at the time who people thought was a clergyman. Whether or not he actually was is immaterial--the point is that people thought he was (and thus wrote it down in documents). So the idea behind the argument is that if the spy was a clergyman working at the French embassy, and Bruno was the only clergyman who worked there at the time, he must have been the spy. But this argument ignores the possibly that the spy could have just been pretending to be a clergyman.

If Bruno didn't look like a clergyman, and he didn't do anything to act like one, why would anyone think he was? Answer choice (A) doesn't completely disprove the argument, but it makes it much more likely that the spy was someone else (a person who appeared to observers to be a clergyman).

Answer choice (E) really doesn't do much to weaken the argument. Sure, if Bruno happened to be a "well-educated" member of the clergy (which we don't know), maybe he worked as a tutor or secretary. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have also been a spy! The documents just say the spy was a clergyman working at the French embassy, it doesn't say what job he had.

Hope that helps!
Beth