A finding question with competing explanations tests whether new evidence favors the claim over its rival. First, split the claim into parts, including what it says happened and how it happened. Ask what evidence would support each part, then predict what would separate the explanations. Accept each finding as true, and check which parts it actually supports. Evidence that works equally well for both explanations does less to settle the disagreement than evidence that favors one.
Hints
- Hint 1
Read Patel's claim in the final sentence and split it into what the playwrights used and how they used it.
- Hint 2
The scholars and Patel explain the same witness order in different ways. Ask what would let you test whether one writer relied on the other's scene.
Step-by-step
Trace the source and test independence
Step 1Split Patel's claim
Patel argues that the playwrights independently adapted a stagecraft manual published years earlier. What are the two parts of that claim? Both scenes came from the manual, and the writers used it separately rather than one copying the other. We need evidence that both writers used the manual on their own, because the matching witness order by itself fits either account.
- Step 2
Predict what would separate the accounts
What would separate the accounts? We'd want evidence of how each writer built the scene, not only proof that both could read the manual. And although Voss's play premiered first, a premiere is a public performance, not necessarily the first time someone could have seen a script.
- Step 3
Test access and timing
The finding that both writers borrowed copies shows access, not separate use of the manual. Either could borrow the book and still rely on the other's scene. The review of Voss's premiere gives Reyes a possible route to Voss's scene, and the draft written after Voss's script began circulating privately also leaves copying possible. None directly shows that the writers independently adapted the manual.
- Step 4
Connect the drafts to both parts
How do the early drafts show that the playwrights independently adapted the manual? Each writer cites it beside a scene outline before either script circulated, tying both scenes to the manual while making copying less likely. Their different optional details show separate choices from the same source, which adds evidence that each writer adapted it on their own. Choice C.