Monthly Archives: May 2006

It’s that time of year again …

Posted on May 28, 2006

… when I’m buried in tripos marking. Distractions between marking sessions are necessary. So I’ve just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad which made a wonderful diversion from the usual mixed bag of metaphysics scripts. Incidentally, the white smoke has … Continue reading →

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Libraries should be circular?

Posted on May 16, 2006

When I was in Aberystwyth, I had a decent sized room in the Hugh Owen Building which is halfway up Penglais, with panoramic views over Cardigan Bay. In Sheffield, I had a huge room on the 12th floor of the … Continue reading →

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Tired of ontology?

Posted on May 13, 2006

It requires a certain kind of philosophical temperament — which I seem to lack — to get worked up by the question “But do numbers really exist?” and excitedly debate whether to be a fictionalist or a modal structuralist or … Continue reading →

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Laws of nature

Posted on May 7, 2006

I’m giving just four second-year lectures on the philosophy of science this term, revisiting Lakatos (I’m a long-time fan). Last year I talked instead about laws of nature; rather to my surprise I found myself taking exactly the opposite line … Continue reading →

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Ancestral logic

Posted on May 7, 2006

One of the many things I want to do once I’ve got my Gödel book finished is to slowly trawl through the first twenty years (say) of JSL to see what what our ancestors knew and we’ve forgotten. I was … Continue reading →

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