Usual Tuesday lectures and Seminars

Numbers seem down again to me for John Worrall's lecture on "Scientific Revolutions". I am not surprised really. The focus on Kuhn's account in The Copernican Revolution seems totally misplaced to me. Considering our MSc course is titled "History of Science", it is clear that our lecture course is nowhere near satisfactory for this title. I have been looking at comparable courses at UCL - here there are some excellent H of S courses. In fact, I have been printing out some lecture notes from these. I have to admit, this a real disappointment.

Victor was speaking on the Copernican Revolution at the seminar this morning. He had a one page handout and spoke from his chair rather than go up to the front and speak. It is clear that he holds this seminar in some contempt too. But actually, for the first time, I did feel that things went a little better. True, George remains a pain and talks far too much. But we did have some good discussion this week.

Saw Jacob briefly as I was leaving the NAB - he said he'd liked the proposed Clare Market review paper and would email me about it soon. But we didn't have time to talk now.

I had lunch with Victor afterwards and I asked him how his talk to the dissertation seminar had gone last Friday (I choose not to travel to London for just this). he surprised me by producing a detailed paper. He had been working on this for a year or two apparently. It was full of Kepler related stuff - no wonder he was a bit dismayed by my presentation the previous week. I reckon that I own about 90% of the books in his references list.

But that said, Victor has made superb use of the material and the things he has said are a level above where I am. This has really set me pondering on my own proposed dissertation. I plan to study Victor's paper in some detail soon.

(I was also very impressed with the format of the paper and have realised that I need to do some work on my knowledge of Word)

Checked into the County hotel early afternoon and spent most of the afternoon reading. The room was an ex-smoking room and it smelt awful. I had to have the window wide open. Late afternoon walk back to LSE via Charing Cross road.

And back at LSE I discovered that there was no Dissertation seminar tomorrow so I needn't have booked a hotel at all. I really do need to do a better job at staying up to date via Moodle.

Philosophy of Science lecture tonight was on Hempel's confirmation theories. Not a topic I know in detail. No one presented to the seminar and we had a general chat instead. I made a number of points, some very controversial I would say (such as P of S being a degenerating style of philosophy as shown by the British Journal for P of S)! I am slowly developing my thoughts more on the realtion between P of S and H of S. That may form more of my dissertation topic than I had originally thought.

So back home late tonight - no point staying in the smoky hotel room. I am planning a trip to Oxford tomorrow. A few jobs to do and then some time at the Bodliean going through some volumes of the Journal for the History of Science