Two more days at LSE

I remain somewhat unconvinced by the "Scientific Revolutions" course and associated seminar. I remember Elie Zahar's "Rise of Modern Science" course from the early 1980s as being an outstanding course. But this one looks a very faint comparison. John Worrall is closely tracking Kuhn's account of the Copernican Revolution and seems to be planning to take several lectures over this (5 or 6 maybe). This seems somewhat redundant as we are all quite able to read Kuhn ourselves I would have thought. I was looking at a website for a UCL course in History of Science and it did the entire history of science from Greek to Quantum theory in 20 weeks with Copernicus getting one week. I can't help thinking this would be better.

Our seminar today is focused on Lakatos's Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. We have a short paper read by Leonardo, an Italian student (who I was amazed to discover is 42. He looks about 30!). I had re-read Lakatos for this seminar and had a number of detailed points. This went ok, but I also have doubts about this seminar (yet we are only in our second week of term!). Next week I am speaking about the motions of the sun, moon and planets. This also is meant to track Kuhn and I am not at all convinced that this is worthwhile. I am thinking of widening my theme somewhat - not sure how yet.

Lunch with Femke, Mark and Victor in the Brunch Bowl - they are all still auditing lots of classes.

Given the late finish on a Tuesday post "P of S", I have decided to start staying up on a Tuesday night, so this afternoon I travelled across to Queensway where my cheap hotel was based. Very poor standard but only £35 a night! I spent the afternoon stretched out on the bed reading.

Back to LSE for an evening of Philosophy of Science and a new lecture room to accomodate the inter-colleagate students from King's. Tonights lecture continues to work through aspects of the history of P of S, especially the rise of "institutional" P of S in Universities in the early part of the 20th Century. Our seminar group remains too big. Caroline spoke about Giere's Viewing Science, a paper I had forgotton to print off and bring with me. Apparently it was on Moodle, but I have yet to really get to grips with this system.

It is definitely better to go to a hotel afterwards than it is to try and slog it home.

Wednesday is focused on the MSc writing seminar and today's presentation was by Miklos himself, discussing the things that interest him and trying to give us some idea about choosing our own topics. I have volunteered to speak next week to this seminar - though we are only two weeks in and I have nearly two years to complete my thesis.

I have continued to audit Nancy Cartwright's "Evidence" lectures and they do remain interesting - but I suspect that this won't be a course I end up doing. Lunch with Mark at the Brunch Bowl again. He is very interested in consciousness and we talked about Daniel Dennett. I will try and remember to photocopy the autobiography that he has had in the last couple of issues of "Philosophy Now".

And then off to Tate Modern to see the Mark Rothko show