Humanism, Magic & Science, c.1500-c.1700 - HIS00126I

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Module summary

The period c.1500-1700 has been traditionally regarded as having witnessed, intellectually speaking, the birth of the ‘modern’ world. The clerical, collective mind-set of the ‘Middle Ages’, based on deference to authority (political and intellectual), is seen to have given way to a secular, individualist world-view founded on reason and experiment. This module will test this proposition and examine just what this intellectual watershed (if it was) consisted of. To do this, the binary simplicity of such lazy mental habits which oppose magic to science; humanism and the humanities to science and religion to reason have to be jettisoned. In their place, we need to be aware of the fundamental unity of experience which characterised this intellectual ‘world we have lost’ in which priests could be scientists and scientists, alchemists. How is it, for example, that such a widely acknowledged ‘father’ of modern science as Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), has been described with some justification as: ‘the last of the magicians’?

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 2 2025-26

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

• To provide students with the opportunity to study particular historical topics in depth
• To develop students’ ability to examine a topic from a range of perspectives and to strengthen their ability to work critically and reflectively with secondary and primary material

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

• Have acquired a deep knowledge of the specific topic studied
• Have developed their ability to use and synthesise a range of primary and secondary sources
• Be able to evaluate the arguments that historians have made about the topic studied
• Have developed their ability to study independently through seminar-based teaching

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 1-hour plenary/lecture and a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW) during which there are no seminars. Students prepare for and participate in eight 1-hour plenaries/lectures and eight 2-hour seminars in all.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

1. Introduction to the shape of knowledge (Giovanni Battista Della Porta)
2. Rhetoric (style) & Education (Desiderius Erasmus)
3. Dialectic (reason) & the ‘New Learning’ (Francis Bacon)
4. Magic, alchemy and the new medicine (Paracelsus)
5. Hermetic philosophy and a new cosmology (Giordano Bruno)
6. Martyr, heretic or rash courtier? (Galileo Galilei)
7. The ‘Making of Modern Science’ (Isaac Newton)
8. ‘The West vs the Rest’: or why Isaac Newton was not Chinese?

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

For formative assessment, students will complete a referenced 1200 to 1500-word essay relating to the themes and issues of the module. This will be submitted in either the Week 5 or Week 9 RAW week (on the day of the weekly seminar).

For summative assessment, students will complete an Assessed Essay (2000 words, footnoted). This will comprise 100% of the overall module mark.

Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Module feedback

Following their formative assessment task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.

Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative work during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

• John Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the origins of modern science, 3rd edition, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008)
• Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the sciences: European knowledge and its ambitions, 1500-1700, 3rd edition, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2019)
• Katherine Park & Lorraine Daston eds., The Cambridge History of Science. Vol. 3 Early Modern Science, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) - ebook