Philosophy of Science, History of Science work, reading etc

After reading Victor's rather excellent paper that is intended to be his MSc thesis, I have felt it important to put in a couple of days work on my own dissertation - mainly to begin the process of fining down ideas. I had an email from Vicenzo (friend number 10 on facebook) who suggested that my presentation was such a mish-mash of ideas, that it might be hard to focus on just a few. So with both these points in mind, I have been looking to focus a bit more my initial ideas.

One idea is to look at the period from about 1500 to 1630 and examine the reasons why, in their different ways, Copernicus, Bruno and Kepler accepted the heliocentric model - I want to try to support the claim that this produces important issues for philosophy of science via the difficulty in accounting for working on a theory that has severe difficulties versus the established rival in some sense. I will try to site Copernicus's own "conversion" to heliocentricism in some of the anti-Ptolemaic work that he came into contact with in the very early 1500s. Then Bruno and Kepler are two possible reactions to contact with Copernicanism - a good source of contrast. All the while, the aim is to flesh out Burtt's answers related to metaphysical ideas in science.

And spending a few days on this topic should provide whatever basis I might be able to develop for submitting a proposal to the History of Science conference next year that Miklos told me about. This is due at the end of November so if I am going to send something in I need to get working on it very soon.

One book that I am finding very interesting in respect of some of this is Larry Lauden's Progress and its Problems. His main theme is a response to Lakatos and Kuhn and often seems very close to one or other of these. But there are some good ideas in the book - though maybe the idea of "research traditions" is not one of them.

My other reading that is not directly related to my MSc is Ted Honderich's Philosopher A Kind of Life. I have very mixed views on this. It is clearly a very interesting look at the inside of a philosophy department (UCL's). But I find his brand of Philosophy of Mind to be rather boring. I also think he is a quite appalling person (or maybe a very honest autobiographer). Only about 20 pages to go in this one.

And I have been reading The Pope and the Heretic , a book on Giordano Bruno by Michael White - not perhaps the most scholarly work, but quite good fun and it has produced one or two leads to other reading.

My second PC has now attracted a Virus infection of some sort. The first PC is not fixed properly either. So I am rapidly running out of properly working PCs!

Late on today I received an email in respect of my Clare Market Review article. This contains an editing offer. Historically I have not enjoyed the experience of being edited. So I am planning one more edit myself this weekend and then send it in on Monday with a note that I would rather it not be too heavily copy edited (as I'll get annoyed by this - just like Feyerabend and the edit of Against Method)