Dr Stephen Pumfrey
Senior Lecturer
Degree: M.A. (Cantab.) Ph. D. (University of London)
Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Science Studies, Medieval and Renaissance, University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (UCREL)
Current Teaching
HIST 100: History and Historians
I am convenor of this, the department's core first year course taken by some 300 students. My specific contribution to this broad course is two sets of lectures and associated seminars. The first introduces students to "the medieval world view" of the universe and humankind's place in it, and follows its destruction and replacement by our modern scientific one. The second examines the so-called "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century. How rational was this "Age of Reason", especially when it came to Europeans' reactions to other cultures.
HIST 294/295. Nature and Culture: the Renaissance and After.
This pair of modules examines changing ideas about the natural world from c.1500-c.1700. It begins with the Renaissance worldveiw of Christianised Greek philosophy, looks at revolutions in medicine, anatomy, astronomy, examines the rise and fall of witchcraft and magic, and asks how much of modern attitudes to nature had been forged by the era of Isaac Newton.HIST294 generally runs in the Michaelmas term and covers broad themes.HIST295 generally runs in the Lent term and looks at in-depth case studies.
HIST 333. Science and Society in England, 1640-1688.
A third level, intensively taught course consisting of over 60 hours of seminars, often focussing on primary sources. We assess the nature of England's rapid rise to prominence as a scientific nation in these five decades, relate it to the social and cultural context, and assess the strength of competing explanations of it. A fuller description can be found at:http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/history/undergrad/hist333.htm
SSM module. The Medical Marketplace in Early Modern England.
A short, intensive course for medical students on medical provision in England c.1550-c.1750.
Postgraduate Teaching: Contributions to:
Hist 405. History for Life. History of science and its relevance to our current understanding of science.
Hist 422. Medieval Documents and Palaeography. Sessions on the transition from manuscript to print culture, and on editing early modern documents.>
All the courses above have dedicated interactive websites, which include substantial electronic resources. These "LUVLE sites" are not externally available.
Research Interests
His main expertise lies in the history of Renaissance and early modern science and medicine. More generally, he explores the role of early modern science in the construction of modernity. He is especially concerned with post-positivist understandings of the emergence of "new philosophy" in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His current projects include: the emergence of experimental philosophy in the seventeenth century; the history of astronomy, notably lunar astronomy; the work of the transitional philosopher William Gilbert (1544-1603).He is also working, together with Dr Ian Stewart in Canada, on a critical edition and translation of William Gilbert's manuscript De Mundo Nostro Sublunari, to be published by Brill Academic in 2012-13.His most recent publication in this area concerns Gilbert's extraordinary map of the moon.
'Science and patronage in England, 1570-1625' is the title of a three-year, AHRC-funded major research project which he directed, and for which a major monograph is planned for 2014. His research on this large topic is continuing, and his most recent publications in the area are:John Dee: the patronage of a natural philosopher in Tudor England (2012)and a chapter on Thomas Harriot and patronage in the forthcoming book (August, 2012)Thomas Harriot and His World: Mathematics, Exploration, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England.
He is now developing a new field of research, applying the techniques of corpus linguistics to the corpus of Early English Books Online (which exceeds one billion words). He is collaborating with members of UCREL (University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language), notably Dr Paul Rayson, and he convenes the research group CREME (Corpus Research on Early Modern English). An early product and first publication of this research concerns the transition from religious to scientific meanings of the lemma experiment in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English.See "Experiments in Early Modern English" in Literary and Linguistic Computing (forthcoming, 2012)
He is also interested in comparisons of public and private promotion of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He is co-supervisor, with Dr Graham Dyer of The Royal Mint Museum, of an AHRC CDA project investigating The Royal Mint in the mid eighteenth century and the extent of its innovativeness.
Potential Doctoral Proposals
- Science, Medicine and Philosophy in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe.
- Early English Books and the application of corpus linguistic analysis.
- Patronage in Tudor and Stuart England
- The intellectual history of magic and witchcraft.
- Science, technology, private enterprise and the state in England, 1500-1800.
Recent and Selected Publications
With Paul Rayson and John Mariani, "Experiments in Early Modern English", Literary and Linguistic Computing 27 (2012) [in press]
>"Patronising, publishing, and perishing: Harriot's lost opportunities and his lost work 'Arcticon',in Robert Fox (ed.), Thomas Harriot and His World. Mathematics, Exploration, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England (Ashgate: August, 2012).
"John Dee: the patronage of a natural philosopher in Tudor England", Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, 43 (2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2011.12.003
"Harriot's Maps of the Moon: new interpretations" in Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 63 (2009).
With Frances Dawbarn, 'Science and Patronage in England, 1570-1625: A Preliminary Study', History of Science, 42 (2004), 137-88. A draft of the article is also reproduced on the present website: see Science and Patronage in England, 1570-1625.
'Gilbert, William (?1544-1603)' and 'Hauksbee, Francis (bap. 1660, d.1713)' in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
'Was Thomas Harriot the English Galileo? An Answer from Patronage Studies', Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 21 (2003), 11-22.
With David Tilley, 'William Gilbert: forgotten genius', Physics World (November, 2003), 15-16. See also: http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/16/11/2.
'Potts, Plots and Politics: James I's Daemonologie and The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches', in Robert Poole (ed.), The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).
Latitude and the Magnetic Earth (Icon Books: Cambridge, 2002). Also published in Spanish as Latitud.
'Who Did the Work? Experimental Philosophers and Public Demonstrators in Augustan England', in British Journal for the History of Science, 28 (1995), 131-56.
With Roger Cooter, 'Separate Spheres and Public places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture', History of Science, 32 (1994), 237-67.
Recent public lectures, conference and seminar papers, etc..
Early Modern History Seminar, University of Sheffield, 16th May, 2012, "Seventeenth-century England and the origins of modernity: answers from corpus linguistics".
Crawford Lecture, University of Edinburgh, 8th May, 2012, "Galileo's lunatic fringe".
Department of History Lunchtime Seminar, University of Lancaster , 25th April, 2012, "Was there an Enlightenment in seventeenth-century England after all? answers from corpus lingustics"
BBC In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, 12th April, 2012, "Early Geology".
UK-Germany National Astronomy Meeting, University of Manchester, 27th March, 2012, "Kepler's Lunar Astronomy: putting his Somnium into historical context"
Royal Institution/Leonardo da Vinci Society Joint Conference, Fame in Art and Science, "Galileo Galilei"
Other Interests and Hobbies
Squash, cooking, historical novels, supporting my son and daughter in St John's Junior F.C., Manchester.
Associated Keywords: Britain, Cartography, Digital humanities, Early modern culture, Early modern England, Gunpowder Plot, History, History of philosophy, History of science, Natural philosophy, Philosophy of science, Renaissance culture, Science and technology studies, Science, technology and society, Seventeenth century, Seventeenth-century culture
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