second year course outlines 2012-2013 - School of Social Sciences ...

All reading lists are for guidance only! The texts listed should help you increase your
understanding of the topics covered in the course, and help you prepare for the assessed
essay and exam. But you are also encouraged to use your own initiative and find relevant
articles and books by chasing up interesting footnotes, browsing real and virtual libraries,
following your hunches, and so on.
Please note!
1. There are lots additional references for each week’s topic at the back of the course text
book. Additional references will sometimes be included in the lecture notes as well.
2. The reading list linked to on the front page of the Blackboard site is NOT the reading list
for this course! (It’s for last year’s version.) However it does contain a lot of relevant readings
for some of the topics – where this is so, it’s flagged in the reading list below.
3. In addition to Bortolotti 2008, there are lots of other textbooks that cover some of the
same material. These might help you if you are finding a particular topic difficult. For
example:
Alexander Bird, Philosophy of Science (London: UCL Press, 1998)
Alan Chalmers, What is This Thing Called Science? Milton Keynes: Open University
Press, 1982 – or any later edition)
James Ladyman, Understanding Philosophy of Science, London: Routledge, 2002.
Available through the library as a Dawson e-book, either to read online or to
download for up to 5 days.
Relevant chapters of the Ladyman appear in the reading list below.
4. The reading list is divided into original sources and textbooks/encyclopedia entries. The
latter are there to provide a general overview and suggestions for further avenues to explore;
they are not a substitute for original sources. In your essay and exam you will be expected to
engage with original sources and not simply rely on textbook/encyclopedia material.
5. All of the journal articles listed are available online through the University’s e-library. If
you’re having difficulty, please consult
www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/intranet/ug/philosophy/ resources/online/ for some
advice. NB you may have to hunt around for a link that says ‘institutional login’ or ‘login via
Shibboleth’.
6. Many of the articles/book chapters (or extracts from them) – plus others that will be
relevant – are also to be found in:
J. A. Cover & M. Curd, Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1998)
A couple of copies of this should appear in High Demand in due course.
Original sources
Week 2: What is science?
Kuhn, T. S. 1970. ‘Logic of discovery or psychology of research?’, in Lakatos, I. & Musgrave,
A. (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: CUP, 1970) [there are
photocopies of this chapter in High Demand]
Lakatos, I. 1973. ‘Science and pseudoscience’, Lecture; also in his Philosophical Papers, vol.
1 (Cambridge: CUP). [On Blackboard site]
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