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 131. The Enlightenment: Understanding the Modern World.

A first-year course, introducing students to the intellectual and cultural history of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the idea of modernity, and the extent to which modern values derive from the Enlightenment.

HIST 235/236. Nature and Culture: the Renaissance and After.

A second level course examining changing ideas about the natural world from c.1500-c.1700.

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.

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 2010. 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 2009.

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.
Science and patronage.
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.
Science and patronage.
The intellectual history of magic and witchcraft.
The intellectual history of early modernity.

Selected Recent Publications

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).
'The Spagyric Art, Or, The Impossible Work of Separating Pure from Impure Paracelsianism: A Historiographical Analysis', in Ole Grell et al. (eds), The Transformation of Paracelsianism 1500-1800 (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1999).
'The Scientific Revolution' in Michael Bentley, Gerald Aylmer et al. (eds.), The Writing of History: An International Guide to Classical and Current Historiography(London: Routledge, 1997).
'"These 2 hundred years not the like published as Gellibrand has done de Magnete": The Hartlib Circle and Magnetic Philosophy', in Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie and Timothy Railor (eds.), Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 247-67.
'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.