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Steven Shapin

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Born: September 10 1943

Shapin was trained as a biologist at Reed College and did graduate work in genetics at the University of Wisconsin before taking a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.

From 1972 to 1989, he was Lecturer, then Reader, at the Science Studies Unit, Edinburgh University, and, from 1989 to 2003, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, before taking up an appointment at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard. He has taught for brief periods at Columbia University, Tel-Aviv University, and at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. In 2012, he was the S. T. Lee Visiting Professorial Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

He has written broadly on the history and sociology of science. Among his concerns are scientists, their ethical choices, and the basis of scientific credibility. He revisioned the role of experiment by examining where experiments took place and who performed them. He is credited with restructuring the field's approach to “big issues” in science such as truth, trust, scientific identity, and moral authority.

"The practice of science, both conceptually and instrumentally, is seen to be full of social assumptions. Crucial to their work is the idea that science is based on the public's faith in it. This is why it is important to keep explaining how sound knowledge is generated, how the process works, who takes part in the process and how."

His books on 17th-century science include the "classic book" Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life ; his "path-breaking book" A Social History of Truth , The Scientific Revolution , and, on modern entrepreneurial science, The Scientific Life . A collection of his essays is Never Pure . His current research interests include the history of dietetics and the history and sociology of taste and subjective judgment, especially in relation to food and wine.

He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and he has written for Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker.

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Steven Shapin

Steven Shapin

Books from Steven Shapin

Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England

The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation

Never Pure

Foodists: Writing About Eating from the London Review of Books

The Scientific Revolution

Trust Me, I'm a Scientist (Birthday Counterpoints)

London Review of Books (vol. 42/11)

Bilimsel Devrim

Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority

The Scientific Revolution

Nunca Pura: Estudos Históricos de Ciência como se Fora Produzida por Pessoas com Corpos, Situadas no Tempo, no Espaço, na Cultura e na Sociedade e Que se Empenham por Credibilidade e Autoridade

Los Angeles Review of Books - Digital Editions: The New Age of Science and Technology