November, a busy month - four gigs - all about the possiblity of a 'post-scientific' future.
The radical contingency of science paper - read to the undergraduate and postgraduate philosophy societies, the Ustinov Seminar, and, at the end of the month, to the 'Science, Contingency, and Pluralism' workshop. The latter one sees me presenting alongside Greg Radick (Professor at Leeds), Robin, and David E. Cooper, so some nerves are anticipated.
The paper is improving - though ambiguities remain (what is 'science', what is 'future', and so on) - and just what makes for a 'scientific culture'? Perhaps that's a question for Stephen Gaukroger ... a useful question at the Ustinov Seminar ("What makes you think that even we live in a 'scientific culture'?") provoked useful ideas.
The paper should be sharpened up nicely, though, and then, in December, it gets its last airing, at Mary Midgley's Apis discussion group. Since it was her remark - on the "oddness" of a culture without interest in the world - prompted the paper, it's apt that it should end at her gig.
Then, my paper is sent off ... let's see what the journal referees make of a paper that starts with Feyerabend and ends with Nietzsche and Charles Taylor!
