The noticeboard outside the Senior Common Room had become almost completely covered.
Mr Blottisham examined it with concern.
"Something must be done."
Professor Quillibrace looked up from his tea.
"About what?"
"The proliferation."
"The proliferation of what?"
"Committees."
Quillibrace glanced towards the board.
"Ah."
"There is now a committee for reviewing the committees."
"Yes."
"And a subcommittee to evaluate whether the committee-reviewing committee has achieved its objectives."
"Naturally."
Blottisham sighed.
"I fear the original purpose has been forgotten."
Miss Elowen Stray smiled.
"That is an interesting accusation."
"Why?"
"Because many successful things develop in precisely that manner."
Blottisham looked suspicious.
"I don't think you're defending committees."
"Not necessarily."
"Good."
"I am defending growth."
Quillibrace folded his newspaper.
"Consider St Anselm's itself."
"The College?"
"Yes."
"Very well."
"Was there always a Department of Comparative Philosophy and Historical Ontology?"
"Of course not."
"An Institute for Advanced Studies in Conceptual Ecology?"
"Certainly not."
"The annual symposium on the metaphysics of gardening?"
Blottisham looked alarmed.
"I sincerely hope not."
Quillibrace smiled.
"And yet the College began somewhere."
"With a foundation."
"Precisely."
"And then?"
"Questions appeared."
Miss Stray looked towards the shelves of old college histories.
"One question requires a specialist."
"Yes."
"One specialist creates a subject."
"Indeed."
"A subject creates a department."
"Quite."
"A department creates further questions."
"And eventually..."
Quillibrace gestured towards the noticeboard.
"...the inevitable paperwork."
Blottisham laughed despite himself.
"So you are saying theories behave like universities?"
"Not exactly."
"No?"
"Universities provide a useful analogy."
He walked to the blackboard.
"Imagine a scientific idea introduced to solve a particular problem."
He wrote:
Why does the universe look the way it does?
"A question appears."
"Yes."
"An answer is proposed."
He added:
Perhaps an early period of rapid expansion.
"Inflation."
"Quite."
"And then?"
Blottisham thought.
"One asks how it happened."
"Yes."
"What caused it?"
"Yes."
"How did it end?"
"Indeed."
"Whether it happens once or many times."
"Precisely."
Miss Stray smiled.
"The first answer creates new questions."
Quillibrace nodded.
"And this is the curious feature of successful ideas."
"They don't simply answer questions."
"No."
"They manufacture new ones."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"That sounds almost like a problem."
"Why?"
"Because if an idea creates endless questions, how do we know it is succeeding?"
Quillibrace smiled.
"A very good question."
He pointed towards the College around them.
"Does the existence of new departments prove that the original College failed?"
"No."
"Does the fact that the library contains books nobody has read prove the library has failed?"
"No."
"Does the fact that a theory produces new possibilities prove that it has failed?"
Blottisham paused.
"I suppose not."
Miss Stray opened the old College register.
"Perhaps the mistake is expecting growth to preserve simplicity."
"Explain."
"When a seed becomes a tree, it becomes more complicated."
"Yes."
"But complexity is not necessarily confusion."
"No."
"It can be evidence of fertility."
Blottisham looked again at the noticeboard.
"So inflation became..."
"...yes?"
"...a kind of scientific university."
Quillibrace considered this.
"A rather cosmological one."
"A university?"
"Of possibilities."
"With departments?"
"Many."
"Some successful?"
"Certainly."
"Some abandoned?"
"Almost inevitably."
"Some still under investigation?"
"Most."
Miss Stray looked amused.
"And perhaps some departments whose existence seems questionable to future generations."
Blottisham nodded.
"Like the Department of Conceptual Ecology."
"Exactly."
The fire crackled quietly.
For a while they sat in silence.
Then Blottisham spoke.
"I think I see the difference."
"Between what?"
"A bad idea that produces complications..."
"...yes?"
"...and a good idea that produces possibilities."
Quillibrace smiled.
"An important distinction."
Outside, a group of students hurried across the quadrangle carrying books.
One stopped suddenly, remembered something, and turned back towards the library.
Miss Stray watched them.
"The College changes every year."
"Yes."
"But it remains St Anselm's."
"Indeed."
"Perhaps theories are similar."
Quillibrace nodded.
"A successful theory is not necessarily one that prevents further questions."
"No?"
"Perhaps it is one that creates better ones."
The evening bell rang.
The three scholars gathered their papers.
As they left the Common Room, Blottisham glanced once more at the crowded noticeboard.
"I still think there are too many committees."
"Perhaps."
"But..."
"...yes?"
"...I admit that some of them may exist because someone asked an interesting question."
Quillibrace smiled.
"That is how most institutions begin."
"And most theories?"
"Indeed."
They walked beneath the cloisters.
Above them, new stonework had been added to an old arch.
The College was still recognisably itself.
Yet every generation had left additions, alterations and unexpected extensions.
No one had designed the whole.
No one could predict the final form.
And perhaps that was precisely why it continued to live.
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