Morning at the Bodleian

Last trip into Oxford before Christmas. Without any real evidence, it does seem to be quieter than we might have expected. As befits my background in economics and financial markets, I have been following the story of the economic downturn with at least some degree of "academic" interest. My key interest is in the explanation of the unfolding story - how do "participants" explain what is happening? Yet I can't help thinking that some of the responses are overblown - for instance, the Robert Sidelsky article in the current issue of Prospect magazine. Is this really the end of free-market economics? Afterall, even a 3% drop just takes us back to the end of 2006. Surely not that big a deal?

And my response? To get very interested in the idea of buying a house in Oxford as a buy-to-let invetsment! Research continues actively on this.

While Linda has her haircut, I have an hour in the Radcliffe Science library completing my bibliography of the Journal for the History of Astronomy. There are so many interesting articles and I am greatly puzzled by how academics generate research ideas. Surely so much has been said already - how can you contribute something new?

I am continue to try to follow a "PhD reading model". I have now read several books aimed at PhD students and have largely adopted a bibilographical ("literature review") approach to my studies. But my "working bibliography" is now over 80 pages long, and even then it is fairly incomplete. Books and articles are missing from it, especially the many articles I printed off before I decided it was better to simply save the PDF files and it will take days to bring everything into agreement. I don't really want ot spend too much time on this, but maybe can do a little every few days.

I keep getting distracted by new journal sources. Some of these come from the notes attached to articles I am reading, some from general searches of the LSE e-journal lists. So I have recently stumbled across the Archive for History of Exact Science, Renaissance Quarterly, and Journal for the General Philosophy of Science. All with excellent articles of course.

One plan I am also still pondering on is that of trying to produce a journal article. The Aristotle/Galileo/Newton thought experiment still seems the most promising and I have earmarked Studies in History and Philosophy of Science as the possible journal to submit it to. I have continued to collect relevant articles to incorporate references to, but it would need a few days to do the next draft. Until I hear from the US History of Science Conference, I don't think I have time to look at this further.