Wednesday work

The cats are due at the vets this morning so I miss a day in London this week.

My main morning theme is to knock out a paper on a "thought experiment" I had yesterday in order to illustrate the notion of free fall in the physics of Aristotle, Galileo and Newton. This was something that I had been talking to Leonardo about when we had lunch together yesterday and concerns the accounts that each would give related to the dropping of a cannonball down a shaft that passes through the centre of the earth to the other side. I remember that we studied this for physics A-level, but I did have to look up on the internet the precise derivation of the formula for the time of oscillation.

My essay was mainly on the science of each - I only put a short philosophical addendum on the end in reference to the idea of those philosophers of science who believed that Newtonian mechanics could, in some sense, be derived from Galilean (combined with Kepler). I think this view arises because their accounts at the earth's surface are not dissimilar. But the thought experiment shows their accounts to be extremely dissimilar when it comes to what happens in the centre of the earth as the ball passes.

It occurred to me that maybe this is publishable. I would have to beef up the philosophical part. But you never know. For anyone who has never seen the Newtonian explanation of this, it is quite eye-opening. What would need to chance to make it fit for publication? Probably just a better philosophical overview? This might be a Christmas exercise. I have just bought a book on publishing academic work. Maybe this would have some clues for what I would have to do. And which journal? Maybe Isis, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, History of Science, or something similar?

The afternoon, pre cat-collection, was spent article reading - Jardine on Kepler and realism, Larvor on Kuhn and the fuss made of Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Late afternoon I engaged in my first ever bit of facebook "wall to wall" discussions prompted by Vicenzo and him asking me why I hadn't been at the dissertation seminar of earlier today to see him speak. A copy of his presentation is already on "Moodle" and I will be reviewing it soon. A real shame to have missed this and he is a very interesting participant on the course I think.

Also had facebook discussions with Leonardo. He has been working on an essay on the Duhem-Quine thesis and has been feeling rather bogged down in (it having passed 4,000 words which is almost half a thesis). He sent me a copy this afternoon. Considering he is writing in a foreign language, it was actually pretty good. But it was poorly structured and edited. Not far from being a good essay though.

Today's music was mostly really early R.E.M. Things like "Life's Rich Pageant" and their eponymous record. Tracks like "swan swan H", "Oddfellows Local 151", "fall on me" - I had forgotten how good these are.

More reading in the evening of my current PhD book - I have just bought a couple more and do want to consider this theme in some detail over the coming weeks. I still can't really see a straightforward way in which this can be done - but some more radical circumstances could change things.