Experiencing Nature: Proceedings of a Conference in Honor of Allen G. Debus: 58 (The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, 58) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792344774 ISBN 13: 9780792344773

Publisher: Springer, 1997

Synopsis

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0792344774
• ISBN 13: 9780792344773
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 325
• Editor: Theerman P., Parshall Karen Hunger