The Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology highlights the importance of books, articles, and other writings that shape public perceptions of pure and applied science, including engineering, medicine, and mathematics.

The CSW is seeking funds to create a free, open-access, online audio and text archive, “Science Shapers Speak.” The archive will consist of in-depth interviews, two to three hours long, that CSW Director John Horgan has recorded on audio cassette tapes over the past two decades with scores of historically significant scientific figures. Some examples include: the philosophers Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and Karl Popper; the physicists Hans Bethe, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Fred Hoyle, and John Wheeler; the chemist Linus Pauling; the biologists Francis Crick and Stephen Jay Gould; the anthropologist Clifford Geertz; and the mathematician Andre Weil. Many of these figures rarely granted lengthy interviews and are now dead, making these interviews a unique and precious resource for historians, philosophers, sociologists of science, their students, and anyone interested in science.

We have put up the first interview of Science Shapers here as a pilot and testbed for the program. We welcome all feedback.

In 1991, while I was at Scientific American, I wrote a letter (remember letters?) to Thomas Kuhn, who was at MIT. I told Kuhn I wanted to profile him for Scientific American and “tell readers how you developed your views of the process of science.” Kuhn was reluctant; he distrusted journalists, he told me when I followed up my letter with a phone call, and Scientific American had published an annoying review of his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn asked to see other profiles I had done, and I mailed him pieces on his MIT colleagues Claude Shannon and Noam Chomsky. I finally wore Kuhn down, and in February 1991 I traveled to Cambridge and interviewed him for more than three hours in his MIT office. His was one of the most complicated, compelling intellects I have ever encountered. Suhas Sreedhar, my tech-wizard colleague, has digitized the full interview and placed it online. You’ll also find a transcript of the interview produced by the Tape Transcription Center, a highly competent outfit in Boston, plus my write-up of Kuhn from The End of Science. I hope that this interview will provide insights into the thinking of this extraordinarily influential philosopher. We are now seeking funds to add more material like this to Science Shapers Speak: Online Interview with Icons of Science. We welcome your comments on content, presentation or any other aspect of Science Shapers.