To a scholar interested in the social and political history of German education, the variety and quality of research being done in the history of German science in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as illustrated by the contributions to this volume and by the many recent works cited in their footnotes, come as something of a revelation. Several of these articles reveal, at least indirectly, the extent to which many educational historians, including myself, have viewed the German schools and universities primarily through the eyes of humanists, social scientists, and government bureaucrats, neglecting the views and roles of natural scientists. At the same time, however, educational historians and historians of Germany can help to expand the field of vision of historians of science interested in examining the intersections of intellectual and institutional history. A more general historical perspective might contribute to enlarging the range of questions that could be asked in the history of German science. My purpose in this commentary is to isolate what appear to me to be some of those questions, which I hope might direct future research. Historians of educational institutions or other disciplines can certainly derive many benefits from the questions raised and the sources and methods used by the contributors to this volume. Kathryn Olesko's patient combing of school programs as a means of getting at the everyday reality of physics teaching in the gymnasiums and Realschulen could be used to investigate other topics and would be especially valuable in helping to dispel myths about political indoctrination in the schools, which have been based on expressed intentions of some government leaders rather than on classroom experiences.' Her explanation of how learning physics in school largely became "doing" physics via laboratory experiments and demonstrations suggests interesting contrasts with instruction in other subjects. For example, whereas Olesko implies that such active learning was viewed positively by pupils in physics, pupils in the ancient languages often complained that teachers wanted them to "do" too much philology, which took the joy out of reading the classics. David Cahan's investigation of the dependence of scientific advances on the development of appropriate instruments provides a stimulus to thinking about the existence and effects of similar impediments-inadequate libraries, the lack of archival inventories or statistical surveys, or, as with sociology, no role in the secondary curriculum and thus none in the training of teachers-to the evolution of nontechnical fields. Gert Schubring's intriguing study of the natural sciences