A day of study

Daughter is away for the weekend and Linda had a whole stack of things she wanted to do today, so I have a chance to do a full day's study. Despite being a Sunday, I am working by 6:15am. Today's main topic is "The Problem of Induction", a core question for Philosophy of Science and one that I really need to think through in a different way to my previous efforts. Back in the early 1980s at LSE, much of this problem was deemed to have been solved by Popper. However, this just covers one of the formulations of the problem and I need to sort out some sort of framework for understanding the wider problems.

My starting point for this was an article off the Stanford philosophy Encyclopedia. This turned out to be a very obscure article, highly confused between the various problems of induction and spending most of the article discussing probability theories as part of inductive inference. The original problem of induction was simply brushed over.

One of the most pronounced changes between studying again now and in the early 1980s is, of course, the use of the internet. Not just online encyclopedias, but things like having the Bodleian and LSE library catalogues online and being able to look up books as I come across them. I currently have a list of about a dozen books that I hope to be able to get out of LSE Library as soon as I am registered. And some of them are possibly so good that I am thinking of getting them at the Bodeleian - unfortunatley some of them are stack books that have to be ordered. Maybe if I have a study day in Oxford later this week?

I was particularly keen to read a book on Paul Feyerabend called Enemy of Science?. That and Howson's Hume's Problem are my two main priorities.

So today's note taking focused on induction, while today's reading was mainly on Aristotle's system of logic, plus a quick skim through this weekend's only book in the post - Grant's A History of Natural Philosophy. I am also reading My LSE, a book of memoirs of attending LSE that was published just before I went there.

And I managed to do about 500 pages of printing of various other articles I have found. My reading pile is now somewhat unmanageable!