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 debuss personal perspective on the development of the field. audience: this book will appeal especially to historians of science, of chemistry, and of medicine.