Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart joined King’s in 1995 as a Teaching Fellow in the Foundation Year Programme (FYP). Back in the 80’s, mid-way through his undergraduate degree in physics, he realized that the sciences interested him more from the perspectives of philosophical, historical and sociological analysis. After completing his BSc at Trent University, he studied in the field of History and Philosophy of Science at Toronto (MA), and at Cambridge (PhD). Dr. Stewart is currently an Assistant Professor in the History of Science and Technology Programme, and also teaches in the Foundation Year Programme and the Early Modern Studies Programme. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Department of Classics, Dalhousie University. While he specializes in Renaissance and Early-Modern philosophy, science and the institutions that fostered them, his teaching and research interests span aspects from the ancient Greeks to the present. He was also co-coordinator of the University of King’s College's five-part public lecture series, Trust in Science.

Research Interests

•  Renaissance and early-modern natural philosophies
•  History of the universities
•  Public understanding of science—past and present

Selected Publications and Projects

• (In progress, with Stephen Pumfrey) William Gilbert’s ‘A New philosophy concerning our sublunary world’: critical edition and translation (Brill Academic, forthcoming).
• “The new Novum Organum”, (review article of Graham Rees, ed., The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. XI), History of Science xliii (2005), 457–466.
• “The Lucasian Statutes: translation and introduction,” in From Newton to Hawking: A History of Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics (Cambridge University Press, 2004): 461–474.
• “‘Books and how to use them’” History of Science xl (2002): 233–245.
• “Fleshy Books: Isaac Barrow’s Oratorical Critique of Cartesian Natural Philosophy,” History of Universities 16 (2000): 35–102.
• “Mathematics as Philosophy: Proclus and Barrow,” Dionysius 18 (2000): 151–81.

Courses Taught

• HSTC 1200 Introduction to the History of Science
• HSTC 2000 Ancient and Medieval Science
• HSTC 2202 The Beginnings of Western Medicine: Birth of the Body
• HSTC 3205/EMSP 3340 Nature, Natural Knowledge and Power: Francis Bacon and the Renaissance