Could you begin by providing us with some historical background on what motivated the creation of the Strong Programme, and how does it relate to the creation of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh?The Science Studies Unit pre-dated the Strong Programme. As I understand the origin of the Unit, it arose from a suggestion by the biologist C. H. Waddington that scientists should receive teaching in 'Science and Society' courses to broaden their education. The 1960s was a period where governments in this country, knowing that science was of ever-increasing significance and that scientists were therefore becoming increasingly influential, held it to be important that science education was appropriately broad, rather than overly specialised. Waddington persuaded Edinburgh University to create a Unit or Department that was to teach scientists 'Science and Society' courses. The University appointed David Edge 1 , who had moved from radio astronomy at Cambridge into the BBC, where he was doing some science broadcasting. David Edge was acquainted with people such as Thomas Kuhn, Mary Hesse, Imre Lakatos. He knew the philosophers as well as the scientists.Three appointments were made early on to the Unit, and although there was a bit of coming and going in the early years, roughly speaking, I was the philosopher of science, whilst Barry Barnes was the sociologist of science and Steve Shapin was the historian of science. I was the first appointment to the Unit, the others followed quickly on afterwards. Though there was not an 1 D. Edge (1932Edge ( -2003 fut également l'un des fondateurs de la revue Social Studies of Science, désormais centrale dans le domaine des science studies ; D.
