Mae Chow
Cavendish was one of the first women to write using her own name, the only woman to publish her own natural philosophy in the 17th century, and the first woman to be invited to visit the newly formed Royal Society 👍 Her work was equally singular: through 20 volumes of plays, poems, essays, and satires Cavendish explored ideas like atomism, materialism, and animal rights, mixed with discussions on gender and etiquette 😊 Denied formal education and a career because of her sex, Cavendish wrote as she pleased, appealing to her readers, “As for Learning, that I am not versed in it, no body, I hope, will blame me for it 🙈” But behind the feigned simplicity was a formidable philosophical mind that rejected the new vogue of empiricism and experiment for intuition and reason. [1]
Margaret Lucas Cavendish lived in the Seventeenth Century as a philosopher and poet. There are many reasons her work is significant. It presents a compelling early version of naturalism, which is still prevalent in science and philosophy today. The book provides valuable insights into recent conversations about the nature of intelligence, and raises the issue of whether the intelligent are a species. Bodies that surround us are intelligent or have an intelligent cause. Cavendish’s work has another advantage: it anticipates some central views, arguments and ideas that are often associated with figures like Thomas Hobbes David Hume. She also offers novel and compelling responses to questions that are central to the discussions of the Seventeenth Century – for example, about whether sense perception is by means of impressions; about whether human beings are free in a libertarian or a compatibilist sense; about whether whether there is any true disorder in the natural world; about the limits of knowledge, and the limits of ideas and language; and about how motion is transferred between bodies. She also addresses important issues in political and social philosophy with an emphasis on agency and authority and, in particular, on how motion is transferred between bodies. Relation between an individual’s desire to live a life with which they identify and the receptivity and accommodation that that desire encounters in the world The mind is not the only thing. She anticipates that there will be discussions among contemporary philosophers regarding whether our understanding of how matter thinks can help answer the question about whether it thinks. [2]
Margaret Lucas Cavendish (Duchess of Newcastle) was a poet, essayist, playwright, and philosopher. While her philosophy was centred on metaphysics, natural philosophy and other issues, it also covered social and political topics. Hobbes and Descartes also rejected her rejection of what she considered to be the occult explanations offered by the Scholastics. She resisted dualism, incorporeal substances, and argued against Descartes. Hobbes was on the opposite side. She advocated vitalist materialism which states that everything in nature is made up of self-moving and animate matter. In particular, she claimed that nature’s variety and order cannot be explained using atomism and blind mechanism. She instead argued for the need for the natural parts to behave in a regular manner according to their unique motions. She argued that panpsychism was the best explanation for this. Things in nature possess minds or mental properties. She even suggested that every body, including chairs and tables, and all parts of organs such as the liver and heart, knows their unique motions. The harmonious, varied order of nature is created and explained by these different elements of nature. Cavendish is seen in many ways as a philosopher who was able to challenge the scientific paradigm of our time. It is also possible to say that Cavendish predates thinkers like Spinoza or Leibniz. Last revised by Christabel Ortiz, Tbilisi (Georgia) on 1 February 2009. [3]
Cavendish, who is well-known today, was known for writing plays, poems, fiction and letters. Cavendish was prolific and published over a dozen works in her lifetime under her own name. Her portrait is proudly displayed on the frontispieces. This was in a period when women were not allowed to publish work, much less under their own names. Cavendish, a natural philosopher by nature herself, was determined to keep up to date with scientific advances and engage in philosophical discussion despite not having any formal education. Thanks to her high social status, and her husband’s active and supportive interest in philosophy, she was able to personally know the best minds of her time, including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, Walter Charleton, and Joseph Glanvill. Her formal invitation to the Royal Society was the first for a woman. She’s also seeingeeing the famed Royal Society. Air pump Robert Boyle’s experiments. Cavendish pioneered natural philosophy, challenging the dominant mechanist, materialist and dualist views of substance and causality at a time in which many women writers focused on religion or education. Extravagant and eccentric, “mad Madge” stands alone as one of the few early modern women – the list also includes Du Châtelet – who was bold enough to stake out her philosophical position in a non-anonymous way, even at the risk of public ridicule. Fredo Hawley modified the text on February 4, 2020. [4]
