Dr. Paul Wood
Position
Contact
Credentials
BA (Western), MPhil (London), PhD (Leeds)
Area of expertise
European. The intellectual history of early modern Europe
Office hours
Bio
I took my first degree in Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario and was the Department's Gold Medalist in 1975. I then went to study at University College London, where I completed an M.Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science in 1978. I did my PhD at the University of Leeds, and was awarded my degree in 1984 for a doctoral thesis on the Scottish thinker Thomas Reid. I then taught in the History Department at Queen's University, where I was a Canada Research Fellow. I moved to the History Department here at the University of Victoria in 1991. Over the years I have published widely on the intellectual history of early modern Europe, with a special interest in the Scottish Enlightenment. I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1996.
Selected publications
Books:
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- (co-edited with Knud Haakonssen), Thomas Reid on Society and Politics: Papers and Lectures (Edinburgh, 2015).
- (co-edited with M.A. Stewart), Education for Life: Correspondence and Writings on Religion and Practical Philosophy by George Turnbull (Indianapolis, 2014)
- (editor) Science and Dissent in England,1688-1945 (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT, 2004)
- (co-editor with Charles W. J. Withers) Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment (East Linton, UK, 2002)
- (editor) The Correspondence of Thomas Reid (Edinburgh and University Park, PA, 2002)
- (editor) The Culture of the Book in the Scottish Enlightenment (Toronto, 2000)
- (editor) The Scottish Enlightenment:Essays in Reinterpretation (Rochester, NY, 2000)
- (editor) Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation: Papers relating to the Life Sciences (Edinburgh and University Park, PA, 1996).
- The Aberdeen Enlightenment: The Arts Curriculum in the Eighteenth Century (Aberdeen,1993)
Articles and chapters:
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‘Thomas Reid and the Common Sense School’ and ‘Postscript: On Writing the History of Scottish Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment’, in Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, Volume I: Morals, Politics, Art, Religion, eds Aaron Garrett and James A. Harris (Oxford, 2015), 404-52 and 453-67.
- 'Science in the Scottish Enlightenment', in The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Alexander Broadie (Cambridge, 2003), 94-116.
- 'Jolly Jack Phosphorus in the Venice of the North: or, Who was John Anderson', in The Glasgow Enlightenment, eds Andrew Hook and Richard B. Sher (East Linton, UK, 1995), 111-32.
- 'The Natural History of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment', History of Science, 18 (1990), 89-123.
- 'The Hagiography of Common Sense: Dugald Stewart's Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid', in Philosophy,Its History and Historiography, ed. A. J. Holland (Dordrecht, 1985),305-22.
- 'Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society', The British Journal for the History of Science, 13 (1980), 1-26.
Courses
| HSTR 130 | History of Science |
| HSTR 320D | Scottish History in Film, 1314 - present |
| HSTR 338 | European Culture in Crisis, 1580 - 1696 |
| HSTR 339A | Topics in Enlightenment Thought and Culture |
| HSTR 339B | A Social History of Enlightenment in Europe, 1680 - 1789 |
| HSTR 356A | Science and Religion in Europe from Galileo to Darwin |
| HSTR 443 | Atheism and Unbelief in Early Modern Europe |
Grad students
- Stephen Snobelen, ‘Selling Experiment: Public Experimental Lecturing in London, 1705-1728’, MA 1995
- John Andrew Kavcic, ‘English Deism and Natural Law: The Case of Matthew Tindal’, MA 1997
- Camilla Berry, ‘Bulldogs, Watchdogs and Underdogs: Is Evolutionary Theory a Paradigm or a Kennel’, Interdisciplinary MA 2000
- Denine Dudley, ‘Henrietta Louisa Jeffreys, Oxford University and the Pomfret Benefaction of 1755: Vertu Made Visible’ PhD (History in Art) 2004
- John Sterk, ‘The Pamphlet that Woke a Nation’, MA 2005
- Patrick Corbeil, ‘A Godless Fable: Atheism and the Philosophy of Bernard Mandeville’, MA 2011