This volume, honoring the renowned historian of science, Allen G Debus, explores ideas of science - `experiences of nature' - from within a 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 sixteenth-century astronomy and medicine, through nineteenth-century biology and mathematics, to the social sciences in the twentieth-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. Audience: This book will appeal especially to historians of science, of chemistry, and of medicine.

Inhalt

Introduction; P.H. Theerman, K. Hunger Parshall. Experiencing Nature in Intellectual Contexts. 1. The Body Politic Before and After the Scientific Revolution; I.B. Cohen. 2. The Geometrical Kabbalahs of John Dee and Johannes Kepler: The Hebrew Tradition and the Mathematical Study of Nature; M.T. Walton, P.J. Walton. 3. The Theological Foundations of Darwin's Theory of Evolution; R.J. Richards. 4. Chemistry through Invariant Theory? James Joseph Sylvester's Mathematization of the Atomic Theory; K. Hunger Parshall. Experiencing Nature in Social Contexts. 5. Religion, Science, and the Public Imagination: The Restoration of Order in Early Modern France; T.D. Murphy. 6. Dancing with Spiders: Tarantism in Early Modern Europe; M. Baldwin. 7. Nature and Culture in the Discourses of the Virtuosi of France; K. Wellman. 8. Dionysius Lardner's American Tour: A Case Study in Antebellum American Interest in Science, Technology, and Nature; P.H. Theerman. Establishing an Historiographical Tradition. From the Sciences to History: A Personal and Intellectual Journey; A.G. Debus. Selected Bibliography; A.G. Debus. Index.