Leviathan and after – a celebration of the history of science, the field, and its future.
12 May 2025, 10:00 am–7:00 pm

A joint UCL STS – Science Museum Conference
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
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UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies – UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies
On Monday 12 May 2025, join the UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Science Museum, London, in our landmark celebration of history of science, the field, and its future to mark the 40th anniversary of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's field-changing Leviathan and the Air Pump.
Forty years ago, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air Pump approached ranges of scientific methods as integrated within contrasting patterns of behaviour and ways of life. Their suggestion was that solutions to the problems of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order. That suggestion becomes ever more significant in periods of dramatic social and political transformations and of shifting models and standards of knowledge.
Four decades after the appearance of that book, up and coming researchers will consider how the relations between changing social orders and solutions to problems of knowledge figure in the concerns of their own work today.
The day will end with a conversation between Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer and John Tresch, to be followed by a reception at the Dana Research Library.
For full details of the events including location information, please visit the following link:
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Should you have any accessibility requirements to access our event, please let us know as soon as possible via email: sts@ucl.ac.uk.
About the Speakers
Simon Schaffer
Professor of History of Science at University of Cambridge

Steven Shapin
Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Harvard University
