Weekend work

Saturday October 17th

Today was a day dominated by a trip to Cambridge to see Emma. She has been back a college for a couple of weeks and seems to be doing more work this year than last! Like all parents, some of our concerns about the current economic situation are due to worries that Emma might not be able to find the work she wants in a couple of year's time.

So only 3 hours work first thing today - re-doing the Powerpoint presentation for next Wednesday as this is stuck (possibly lost) on my virus-hit PC that remains at the computer firm in Abingdon. I have also finished photocopying my H of S seminar presentation for Tuesday.

Sunday October 18th

Lots of "P of S" reading this morning - mainly from Noretta Koertge (ed) A House Built on Sand, a book on the so-called "Science wars"

I have also finally got round to reading Giere's Viewing Science - a historical overview of Philosophy of science and a very interesting presentation. I personally belong in the post-1960s "historical turn" of P of S and believe that P of S can be assessed via the history that it produces, a view of meta theory that I first came across in Lakatos. The logical empiricist programme remains something that I am less interested in (but which I suspect quite a portion of the course will be taken up with, as it is what philosophers of science spend their time doing it seems).

I haven't had an opportunity to argue in a seminar against inductivism yet - but I'm sure that can't be too far away.

I also read some of Salmon (ed) Introduction to Philosophy of Science - the chapter on induction for Tuesday's seminar. Our required reading also includes some of Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery but I haven't bothered reading this. I would expect to still know quite a lot of this work - seems like ages since I spent a summer reading the collected works (at that time) of Popper. Wait a minute, it is ages ago (1982?) But all this is slowly re-building a framework for my understanding of P of S again

In the afternoon I got an email from Femke, the Dutch girl on my course, who has started a Facebook group for LSE Philosophy MSc students. I have joined and have a couple of new friends on Facebook taking my total to five I think.