Difficulties with Philosophy of Science

As part of my dedicated week of study, I have felt that I need to really grasp the nettle and dig deep into the Philosophy of Science course. So I have been working through various substantial themes this week. For instance, "scientific explanation", "causation", "realism", etc. One way to assess if I am on the right track would then be to select a recent exam paper and have a look at how I would do. And the result after a few days hard work is that I seem little closer to being able to do the papers than I was before!

It is not that I don't know what the papers are about as much as it seems that I haven't gone into the subject in anything like the critical depth that I need to have done. So when I see a question, I can tell what area is is concerned with, but I don't have anything like the critical concepts necessary to construct a decent answer.

So today's work was focused a bit more on more technical and specific issues and I was soon very bogged down in detail. So I read two papers today by Nancy Cartwright on causation - both downloaded from the LSE website. These offer perhaps a little more idea of the level I need to go down to.

Each course in my MSc requires about 350-400 hours work and I reckon I have done well over 100 hours on Philosophy of Science in the past 4 weeks. So I should be on track. Of course it would seem too early to be worrying about this as the course hasn't even started yet! None the less, I had expected to be better set after the work I have done.

So easy to get distracted and focus on something I prefer such as something from the History of Science.