Dr Stephen Pumfrey

Stephen Pumfrey

Senior Lecturer

Degree: M.A. (Cantab.) Ph. D. (University of London)

Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Science Studies, Knowledge, Technics and Modernity, Medieval and Renaissance, University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (UCREL)

Current Teaching

HIST 100: History and Historians

My contribution to this broad courseis 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

Hist422. Medieval Documents and Paleography.

Assistant and co-conveno with Dr Angus Winchester of this skills-based module for post-graduate historians of medieval and early modern sources.

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.

All the courses above have dedicated interactive websites, which include substantial electronic resources. These "LUVLE sites" are not externally available.

Research Interests

Stephen Pumfrey's research interests lie 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 in this area investigate the importance of patronage in England, and the work of the transitional philosopher William Gilbert (1544-1603).

'Science and patronage in England, 1570-1625' is the title of a three-year, AHRC-funded major research project which he is directed, and for which a major monograph is planned for 2012. 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 2010.

Areas of Research Supervision

Dr Pumfrey would be pleased to hear from students interested in researching and writing dissertations and theses on topics that fall under the following headings:

Renaissance and early modern natural philosophy.
Renaissance and early modern astronomy/cosmology.
Science and patronage.
The growth of experimental science.
The intellectual history of magic and witchcraft.
The intellectual history of early modernity.

Potential Doctoral Proposals

Science, Medicine and Philosophy in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe.

In particular,Stephen Pumfrey would be pleased to hear from students interested in researching and writing dissertations and theses on topics that fall under the following headings:

Renaissance and early modern natural philosophy.
Renaissance and early modern astronomy/cosmology.
Science and patronage.
The growth of experimental science.
The intellectual history of magic and witchcraft.
The intellectual history of early modernity.

Recent and Selected Publications

"'Our astronomers and your differ exceedingly': A newly discovered book by Thomas Digges on the New Star of 1572", British Journal for the History of Science (2010: in press).
"The first map of the moon: William Gilbert's selenographia", Journal for the History of Astronomy (forthcoming).
"Science and Patronage in Early Modern England: Thomas Harriot and his lost' Arcticon'", in Robert Fox (ed.), Thomas Harriot: New Studies (Oxford: O.U.P., forthcoming 2010).
Harriot's Maps of the Moon: new interpretations" in Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 63 (2009). See http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/63/2/163.full?sid=6f7835fc-e4b6-48d9-9cb2-1f134b22fd01
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.