Experiencing Nature

This volume, honoring the renowned historian of science, Allen G. Debus, explores ideas of science - "experiences of nature" - from within an historiographical tradition that Debus has done much to define. As his work shows, the sciences do not develop exclusively as a result of a progressive and inexorable logic of discovery. A wide variety of extra-scientific factors, deriving from changing intellectual contexts and differing social millieus, play crucial roles in the overall development of scientific thought. These essays represent case studies in a broad range of scientific settings - from 16th-century astronomy and medicine, through 19th-century biology and mathematics, to the social sciences in the 20th-century - that show the impact of both social settings and the cross-fertilization of ideas on the formation of science. Aimed at a general audience interested in the history of science, this book closes with Debus's personal perspective on the development of the field.