Theme 1 - Posteriori

Research

The first seminar was about the journal/paper part of the preparation. It was interesting to me mainly because it was very free-form. We started out by gathering in smaller groups to pick the best journal and paper among those we had gathered. After a period of internal discussion we presented these to the other groups. This was a great way to find out more about the interesting material that others had found. These presentations lead to pretty long discussions on the subjects of their papers and related things, which was pretty interesting. Overall I was overwhelmed with how much information is out there in the form of research journals and papers. It was much harder to find relevant information than I’d have thought before starting this theme. In the groups we also discussed the relevance of impact factor and cites in regards to picking research papers. Someone pointed out that new material will be less cited even though the quality may be superb. Something to keep in mind when searching for material.

Epistemology

The second seminar was about the book “The Problems of Philosophy”, which we read as preparation. I was absent due to illness but have gotten acquainted with what happened at the seminars afterwards. In similar form to the first seminar, they split into smaller groups to discuss the material - then finishing off with a larger discussion. They also went through some background for the book, and why it was written. They said it’s a good book for an introduction into philosophy and epistemology, which I can agree on since it was pretty easy to read and follow (though convoluted at points but I attribute that to its age). Because of my absence I can’t say much more about the seminar itself, but I can expand a little on the source material. Overall on this theme I think the most interesting thing was getting to understand Epistemology a little bit better. I was a little familiar with, through reading independently, but until now was not aware of any practical implementations.

I understand a bit more about its importance in applications of analytical thinking, and where being aware can help in practical situations. This applies to research very much, but also businesses of law, medicine and others. It seems like a broad foundation to build experience upon, to better understand how knowledge gathering is better performed.