The philosophical innovations of Margaret Cavendish

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 219-244

  James, Susan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE; ARTICLE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; EVALUATION; FEMALE; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; PHILOSOPHY; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PUBLICATION; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL STATUS; UNITED KINGDOM; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WRITING;

AUTHORSHIP; CULTURE; ENGLAND; EVALUATION STUDIES AS TOPIC; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; MIND-BODY RELATIONS, METAPHYSICAL; NATURAL HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY; PUBLICATIONS; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL CONDITIONS; VITALISM; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WOMEN, WORKING;

EID: 33750294978     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09608789908571026     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. In 'An Epilogue to my Philosophical Opinions' printed at the beginning of the 1655 edition of Philosophical and Physical Opinions, Cavendish reports that people have said that she must have discussed this work with Descartes and Hobbes (a slightly surprising claim in the light of her text). She replies that although she has met these great men she has barely spoken to either of them' and has only talked about philosophy with members of her family, among whom she names her husband William Cavendish, his brother, Charles Cavendish, and her own brothers, who were not notable for their philosophical interests. Her husband and brother-in-law would, however, have been useful informants. Both were close associates of Hobbes who discussed aspects of his natural philosophy with them during the 1640s. Both met Descartes while they were in exile in Paris, and Charles Cavendish corresponded with Descartes as well as expressing admiration for his Principles. These connections may help to explain the fact that, by the early 1660s, Margaret Cavendish was commenting on the works of both philosophers in print. On the Cavendish family's connections with these and other philosophers, see Jean Jaquot, 'Sir Charles Cavendish and his Learned Friends', Annals of Science 8 (1952), pp. 67-91
2. Robert Kargon, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 54-76
3. For discussions of Cavendish's natural philosophy, see Stephen Clucas, 'The Atomism of the Cavendish Circle. A Reappraisal', The Seventeenth Century, 9 (1994), pp. 247-73
4. Sarah Hutton, 'In Dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish's Natural Philosophy' in Women's Writing, 4 (1997), pp. 421-32
5. G. D. Meyer, The Scientific Lady in England. An Account of her Rise, with Emphasis on the Major Roles of the Telescope and Microscope. (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1955)
6. On the gendered character of Cavendish's natural philosophy, see Sarah Hutton, 'Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish and Seventeenth- century Scientific Thought' in Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton eds., Women, Science and Medicine, 1500-1700 (Stroud, Sutton, 1997)
7. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature. Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (London, Wildwood House, 1982), pp. 253-74
8. John Rogers, The Matter of Revolution. Science, Poetry and Politics in the Age of Milton (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 177-211
9. Lisa T. Sarasohn, 'A Science Turned upside Down: Feminism and the Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish', The Huntington Library Quarterly, 47 (1984), pp. 289-307
10. Lorna Schiebinger, The Mind has no Sex? Women in the Origins of Modem Science (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1989). A great deal has been written about Cavendish as an author of plays, poems and Utopias
11. See for example Kate Lilley, 'Blazing Worlds: Seventeenth-Century Women's Utopian Writing' in Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss eds., Women, Texts and Histories 1575-1760 (Routledge, London, 1992), pp. 102-33
12. Emma Rees ed., Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623-1673
13. Special Number of Women's Writing, 4 (1997)
14. Sophie Tomlinson 'My Brain and the Stage: Margaret Cavendish and the Fantasy of Female Performance' in Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss eds., Women, Texts and Histories 1575-1760 (Routledge, London, 1992), 134-63
15. Susan Wiseman, 'Gender and Status in Dramatic Discourse' in Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman eds., Women, Writing, History 1640-1740 (Batsford, London, 1992), 159-77
16. 'A Condemning Treatise of Atoms' (1655). sig. A, 3v
17. She repeats it three years later in OEP adding that 'The opinion of atoms is fitter for a poetical fancy than for serious philosophy; and this is the reason I have waived it in my philo- sophical works' (p. 144). On the relation between the ordered natural world and the ordered polity in Cavendish's writings see, John Rogers, A Condemning Treatise of Atoms, op. cit., pp. 177-211
18. Descartes, 'Principia Philosophiae' II. 20 in Oeuvres de Descartes ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1964-76), Vol. VIII, p. 51. Cavendish explains in the introductory material to Philosophical Letters that she has had parts of Descartes translated for her, and goes on to comment on his Principles
19. Henry More, Antidote against Atheism (London, 1653). See for example Bk. 2, ch. 2, pp. 51-2
20. Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul (London, 1659), p. 88, (OEP, p. 178)
21. See e.g. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, II. 27
22. Principia Philosophiae, II. 42
23. On the philosophical relations between Cavendish and Hobbes, see Sarah Hutton, 'In Dialogue with Thomas Hobbes', op.cit
24. John Henry, 'Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy: Active Principles in pre- Newtonian Matter Theory', History of Science xxiv (1986), pp. 335-81
25. See also John Rogers, The Matter of Reason, op. cit., pp. 177-211
26. Henry Power, Experimental Philosophy (London, 1664), sig. b4, b3, c2, p. 61
27. Walter Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendi Charltoniana (London, 1654), p. 126
28. Walter Charleton, A Natural History of Nutrition, Life and Voluntary Motion (London, 1659), pp. 119-25
29. For further discussion of the debate about irritability see John Henry, 'Medicine and Pneumatology: Henry More, Richard Baxter and Francis Glisson's Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance', Medical History 31 (1987), pp. 15-40
30. Thomas Hobbes, 'Of Body' in The English Works ed. Sir William Molesworth 11 vols. (London, 1839-45), vol. I, pp. 211, 391
31. Thomas Hobbes, 'Of Body' in English Works ed. Molesworth, vol. I, p. 391. For Cavendish's criticisms see OEP, p. 235
32. Henry, 1986, English Works, op. cit., p. 356
33. PPO, p. 15. Cavendish takes up these speculations in her Utopia, The Description of a New World called the Blazing World, ed. Kate Lilley (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1994), pp. 133f
34. More, Brief Discourse of... Enthusiasm (1656). Ralph Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1820), vol. 1, pp. 234-6; vol. 3, pp. 275-6
35. It has been argued that Cudworth's attack on hylozoism is aimed at Cavendish. See John Rogers, True Intellectual System of the Universe, op. cit., p. 194
36. Robert Boyle, 'Some Considerations touching the usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy' (1663) in Works ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1772) Vol. II, pp. 42-3
37. PL, p. 127. Cavendish's preferred term is 'patterning' or 'patterning out': PL pp. 539-40. It is used by Hobbes, in a passage Cavendish quotes and discusses. 'Some natural bodies have in themselves the pattern of almost all things, and others none at all.' Hobbes, 'Of Body', in English Works, ed. Molesworth, vol. 1, p. 389. It is also used in the English translation of Jan Baptiste Van Helmont's work, Oriatrike or Physic Refined, which Cavendish discusses at length in Philosophical Letters: 'The seminal efficient cause containeth the types of pat- terns of things to be done by itself, the figure, motion, hour, respects, inclinations, fitness, equalisings, proportions, alienation, defects and whatsoever falls under the succession of days, as well in the business of generation as of government' (p. 29)
38. AT (NP), 5: 383. Quoted in Alan Gabbey, 'Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata: Henry More (1646-1671)' in T. M. Lennon, J. M. Nicholas, J. W. Davis eds., Problems of Cartesianism (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1982), p. 211
39. Letter to Henry More, August 1649, AT 5, 403-4. On Descartes's efforts to explain the motion of bodies, see Desmond M. Clarke, 'The Concept of Vis in Part III of the Principia'in Descartes: Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994). Atti del Convegno per il 350o anniversario delta publicazione dell''opera (Napoli, 1996), pp. 321-39
40. e.g. Geraud de Cordemoy, Discernment du corps et de l'ame (1666) and Louis La Forge, Traité de l'esprit de l'homme (1666)
41. See C. McCracken, Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 94-5
42. See e.g. Catherine Wilson, Leibniz's Metaphysics (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1989), p. 175
43. Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, ed. Alison Coudert and Taylor Corse (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996)
44. Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1653), pp. 121, 123
45. See Lisa Sarasohn, 'A Science Turned upside Down: Feminism and the Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish', Huntington Library Quarterly, 47 (1984), pp. 289-307
46. See Gabbey, op. cit.; Sarah Hutton, Introduction to Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, ed. Alison Coudert and Taylor Corse (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996)