Please score my practice essay

QuantMech
Sat, 27 Jul 2013 22:31:30 +0000

I think that you have some good thoughts in this essay.

There are a few minor issues, such as the use of “thrown” rather than “throne” at the end of the second paragraph; using “is” to link “testament” and “our modern world,” where “is found in” would be better; and using “out” instead of “our” in the phrase “With out scientific endeavours.”

You run into a bit of a problem with the example in your first paragraph. It is probably true that Oedipus would have been better off if he had not known that Jocasta was his mother, once he had already married her. However, if he had had full knowledge of his parenthood, he would not have killed Laertes nor married Jocasta to begin with–the argument that Oedipus suits best is the argument against acquiring knowledge too late, not against acquiring it at all.

You have a thoughtful paragraph about the atomic bomb. I think that J. Robert Oppenheimer remarked “Now I am become Shiva, the destroyer of worlds” when the bomb was first tested in New Mexico ahead of its later use in the war, though–and I suspect that he grappled with the awful problem posed by knowledge of atomic power even before that. There is always a challenge to choose between making forceful claims that are rhetorically strong (e.g. “the day eyes began to open”) vs. adhering to absolute accuracy.

My only other comment is that the essay seems slightly short, compared with most essays at the 6 level.