Day two at LSE

Wednesday October 8th

This morning's seminar is possibly one of the most interesting as far as I am concerned - PH445 Philosophical Research and Writing - Philosophy and History of Science. This is the seminar that aims to teach us how to do academic writing and is to help us write our dissertations. I am very excited about the dissertation but don't have to actually hand mine in till August 2010. So although I could probably write a pretty decent one now, I am very keen to pad it out and spend loads more time on it.

Our group is a pretty mixed bunch. There are two guys from San Francisco who did their first degrees at Berkeley - one of whom has one of the most irritating voices I have ever heard - another American, a Swede, an Italian guy, one Dutch girl, a German-French girl and an Italian girl, and two other UK guys (one of whom used to teach Philosophy A-level apparently)

As a result of today's seminar, I have volunteered to give the first student paper outlining what I might do my dissertation on. This is due in two weeks time, but I was able to sketch it out during the day today. This will be the plan to update Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science in respect of modern scholarship on Copernicus, Kepler and (to a lesser extent) Galileo.

Afterwards six of us went for a drink in the Garrick cafe during which one of the people actually suggested that I should be in charge of the History of Science seminar as the points I had made during yesterday's meeting were so interesting!

I attended a few minutes of the AGM of the LSE Hedge Fund but decided I wasn't really that interested in this. Then back to Connaught House for a Nancy Cartwright lecture on Evidence - not a course that I intend to do but I was at LSE anyway and most people are shopping around still.

Afterwards I saw a notice that said Nassim Taleb was speaking on Monday in the main theatre of the New Academic Building on the theme of Decisions, Probability and Belief: beware Mickey Mouse Probability. I will definitely be going down for this - my main concern is that it is a free, ticket-less event open to anyone and so I need to ensure I get there in time. While viewing this, I was joined by Femke, the Dutch girl on a few of my courses. We had a nice chat as we made our way towards the Library. She has already made a few contributions to seminars and I think she will be one of the fun people on the courses. Apparently she is very interested in mathematical logic (a course that I quickly rejected the idea of going to)