Science Shapers Speak:

Online Interviews with Icons of Science

Over the past 25 years, I've had the privilege of interviewing many of the greatest scientists, philosophers and mathematicians of the 20th century.

My colleague Suhas Sreedhar and I are placing digital versions of these interviews online together with transcripts so everyone can appreciate them. The name of this archive is "Science Shapers Speak: Online Interviews with Icons of Science."

So far, we've posted my full, three hour interview with the enormously influential philosopher Thomas Kuhn , as well as excerpts from interviews with two physicists: John Wheeler , one of the most imaginative explorers of the implications of quantum mechanics and relativity; and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who won the 1983 Nobel Prize for specifying the mass-now called the Chandrasekhar limit-above which stars catastrophically collapse.

We welcome your feedback.

- John Horgan

September 22nd, 2006

Posted by John Horgan, The Scientific Curmudgeon


This will be my last post as “The Scientific Curmudgeon.” Earlier today, I started blogging for Discover under the tag “Horganism.” I hope readers of this blog—and particularly those who keep me honest by giving me a dose of my own skeptical medicine—will check out Horganism. (On Discover.com, you can also find “The Final Frontier,” a 10th-anniversary update of The End of Science published in the October issue.) You’ll get the same perspective there that you’ve gotten here, as I explain in my first post, titled “What Is Horganism?”:

To the Nobel laureate Phil Anderson, who coined the term in an essay in Physics Today in 1999, “Horganism” connotes corrosive pessimism about science’s future. For the purposes of this blog—and because, hell, it’s my name—I’d like to define Horganism differently, as healthy skepticism toward faith of any kind, scientific, political, philosophical or spiritual. I understand faith’s appeal. Faith in scientific progress helps sustain researchers struggling to wrest truths from nature. Moreover, science has shown that faith in almost anything—from Zeus and Jesus to Freud and Prozac—can help us heal through the placebo effect, the tendency of our expectations to become self-fulfilling. But great harm has also been done in the name of faith, whether in a religion or in pseudo-scientific ideologies such as Marxism, Social Darwinism, eugenics or psychopharmacology. As my article in the October Discover should make clear, I still see lots of room for progress in science and other human endeavors. I even think we can end war! In other words, I’m a skeptic, but a hopeful one. And that’s the best definition I can think of for Horganism.

Please keep an eye on this website to stay informed about activities of the Center for Science Writings, such as my October 18 debate with Michio Kaku; our “Stevens 100 Greatest Science Books” list; our prizes for student essays; and our science-book award. Jim Weatherall and I also plan to post more science-related articles and interviews here. Whenever we do, I’ll be sure to let you know about it over at Horganism.