In a note to the town council an engineer writes: 'The bridge on the eastern approach now carries four times the traffic it was built for. Repairing it would keep it standing for perhaps five more years. A new bridge would cost three times as much as the repair, but it would last forty years. The council should therefore build a new bridge rather than repair the old one.' What role does the statement that a new bridge would cost three times as much as the repair play in the engineer's reasoning?

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Accepted Answer

It is a fact that tells against the engineer's recommendation, which she admits and then answers by pointing to the far longer life a new bridge would have. The higher price is the one thing in the note that favours repair, and the engineer sets it down honestly before turning it aside with the forty-year life. That is the classic work of a concession answered. The recommendation in the last sentence is the main point, not this; the figure is stated as a fact rather than assumed; and far from being decisive, it is the very objection the engineer overcomes.

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