My next seminar paper (and last for some while) is for Philosophy of Science next Tuesday and is on some feature of Lakatos's paper on History of science and its rational reconstruction. So far, the various seminar teachers have given very dissimilar views on what they presentations should consist of. The most interesting view was given by Nancy Cartwright at her first Philosophy of Economics seminar (which I no longer go to). This view was that we shouldn't be aiming to work through the whole of the paper in a systematic manner - people can do this for themselves. Instead, focus on the things that interested you and which lead to some interesting problems. She was quite fired up about this point - get out there and make a claim . . .
And I really share this view - I want the MSc seminars to be something a lot more challenging than an undergraduate one would be. So far it is too early to say how things will develop in this. Partly, of course, this is because I have been giving the presentations!
So for Tuesday I have hit on a method of presentation that doesn't follow Lakatos at all! This will focus on a "theory - methodology - meta-methodology" model but will support the fundamental claim of Lakatos's paper that, at the meta level, methodologies can critique other methodologies via their accounts of the history of science.
I have just about finished my presentation but I am a bit concerned that this goes well beyond the Lakatos paper. I want to say that the class participants should have read the paper in detail and so I need not refer to it much. And this fits in with the Cartwright model for seminars. But I am still wondering whether it is the right way to go. Still, at the moment, I have no plans to do any other work on this topic (except maybe a index of my mark-ups from the actual article)
Looking forward to hearing the reaction to this way of doing things
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