The reception of scientific ideas, especially fundamental ones such as those proposed by Darwin, Freud, and Einstein—when analyzed via an affective and comparative taxonomy—can be seen to take place within a field of certain obvious variables. These variables can be categorized along the following demarcations (some will apply more to scientific than popular reception): professional-disciplinary cultures, generational factors, philosophies of science, trans-national diffusion, religion, level of education, political ideology, wealth of a nation, and the imagined personas of scientists.