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Social Sciences and Humanities

D-Index
50
Citations
19321
World Ranking
2680
National Ranking
1298

Research.com Recognitions

  • 2009 - Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 2005 - Erasmus Prize, Praemium Erasmianum Foundation
  • 1979 - Fellow of John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Overview

Steven Shapin is affiliated with Harvard University in the United States and focuses primarily on the fields of Arts and Humanities, particularly within the History and Philosophy of Science. Their research spans several interconnected topics including Philosophy and History of Science, Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration, scientometrics and bibliometrics research, History of Science and Natural History, and the broader relationships among Philosophy, Science, and History.

Their recent scholarly output is published in diverse academic venues such as History of Science, Endeavour, Osiris, and the Transversal International Journal for the Historiography of Science. Notable papers include:

  • Hard science, soft science: A political history of a disciplinary array (2022, History of Science)
  • Breakfast at Buck's (2020, Osiris)
  • Specialists with spirit: Re-enchanting the vocation of science (2024, Endeavour)
  • Interview: Steven Shapin (2025, Transversal International Journal for the Historiography of Science)

Throughout their career, Shapin has collaborated with scholars such as Charles S. Maier, J. G. A. Pocock, Joseph Frank, Robert Jervis, and Robert S. Ridgely. These frequent coauthorships reflect engagement with a network of researchers across related fields.

Their work has been recognized with several awards, including the Erasmus Prize from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation in 2005, a Fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded in 2009, and a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation received in 1979.

Shapin's publications and research topics indicate an interest in the cultural and political dimensions of scientific disciplines as well as the social factors shaping scientific knowledge. The interdisciplinary approach is evident in their exploration of how scientific vocations and disciplinary boundaries have evolved.

Best Publications

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

    James G. Traynham;Steven Shapin;Simon Schaffer

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

    Steven Shapin;Simon Schaffer

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

    Steven Shapin

  • The Scientific Revolution

    Steven Shapin

  • Leviathan and the Air-Pump

    Steven Shapin;Simon Schaffer

  • Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology

    Steven Shapin

  • HERE AND EVERYWHERE: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

    Steven Shapin

  • 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

    Steven Shapin

  • History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions

    Steven Shapin

  • The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England

    Steven Shapin

  • The Invisible Technician

    Steven Shapin

  • The scientific life : a moral history of a late modern vocation

    Steven Shapin

  • A social history of truth

    Thomas J. Misa;Steven Shapin

  • Placing the View from Nowhere: Historical and Sociological Problems in the Location of Science

    Steven Shapin

  • Discipline and Bounding: The History and Sociology of Science as Seen through the Externalism-Internalism Debate

    Steven Shapin

  • The Place of Knowledge A Methodological Survey

    Adi Ophir;Steven Shapin

  • The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600

    Steven Shapin;Alfred W. Crosby

  • The sciences of subjectivity.

    Steven Shapin

  • Natural order : historical studies of scientific culture

    Barry Barnes;Steven Shapin

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

    Owen Hannaway;Steven Shapin;Simon Schaffer

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

    Ian Hacking;Stephen Shapin

Frequent Co-Authors

Jerry A. Coyne
Jerry A. Coyne University of Chicago
Rita R. Colwell
Rita R. Colwell University of Maryland, College Park
Martin A. Nowak
Martin A. Nowak Harvard University
Bernard D. Davis
Bernard D. Davis Harvard University
Donald MacKenzie
Donald MacKenzie University of Edinburgh
Lorraine Daston
Lorraine Daston Max Planck Society
Edward Shils
Edward Shils University of Chicago
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking University of Toronto
Jerome R. Ravetz
Jerome R. Ravetz University of Oxford

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