Weekend work

Linda and I have decided to have a quiet weekend at home this weekend. Linda has one or two clients coming to the house for Pilates sessions, but otherwise is pretty clear. Our big decision is to not go into Oxford. Instead, Linda is keen to cook a couple of meals in - something on which I totally approve!

My early weekend work is a re-read of the major paper by Lakatos - Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Someone is presenting a paper on this to the History of Science seminar on Tuesday and I'd like to have some good points to contribute. I am quite in favour of the Lakatos approach to the "reconstruction" of the history of science. I am still reading the Lakatos-Feyerabend correspondence (mainly on the coach each time I travel to London). I do sometimes think it is too tolerant an approach and therefore approaches close to Feyerabend's own "anarchistic" position - an issue I may use in its favour in my dissertation.

And for my dissertation, I have been looking a little more into the career of E.A. Burtt - author of The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, a key text for my planned thesis. There seems to be only one book directly about him so that will be essential reading. They don't have it in the library at LSE and I have bought it secondhand from the USA. That there is just this one book suggests that focusing on Burtt is a good idea as it isn't an area that is well covered already.

I have also been reading a short book on academic writing called How to write a lot - this is aimed at psychologists, but does have a lot of general relevance and I have already picked up a number of tips and good ideas (many of which were also in Watson's brilliant book Writing a Thesis). The dissertation is probably the most important part of the MSc course for me and I want to do a good job on it - and really enjoy it

My supervisor, Miklos Redei, sent me an email the other day with details of an academic conference in the USA next March. This currently has a "call for papers" and says it welcomes papers from Graduate students. Miklos suggests I send something off - afterall, it can't do any harm and who knows what might be the result. So I am thinking about suggesting something on the history of science tradition from Burtt and Koyre focusing on the metaphysical foundations of many theory changes. I have to submit a proposal of up to 1,000 words by December 1st. Wouldn't that be amazing if it got accepted?

And I am also thinking lots about questions such as: how to explain the credit crunch? I am looking into this from the standpoint of Taleb's Black Swans book. He is speaking at LSE on Monday and I am definitely planning to attend. Really looking forward to it in fact.