According to Margaret Cavendish the entire natural world is essentially rational such that everything thinks in some way or another. In this paper, I examine why Cavendish would believe that the natural world is ubiquitously rational, arguing against the usual account, which holds that she does so in order to account for the orderly production of very complex phenomena (e.g. living beings) given the limits of the mechanical philosophy. Rather, I argue, she attributes ubiquitous rationality to the natural world in (...) order to ground a theory of the ubiquitous freedom of nature, which in turn accounts for both the world's orderly and disorderly behavior. (shrink)

Exploring Renaissance humanists’ debates on matter, life and the soul, this volume addresses the contribution of humanist culture to the evolution of early modern natural philosophy so as to shed light on the medical context of the ...

Some scholars have argued that Margaret Cavendish was ambivalent about women's roles and capabilities, for she seems sometimes to hold that women are naturally inferior to men, but sometimes that this inferiority is due to inferior education. I argue that attention to Cavendish's natural philosophy can illuminate her views on gender. In section II I consider the implications of Cavendish's natural philosophy for her views on male and female nature, arguing that Cavendish thought that such natures were not fixed. However, (...) I argue that although Cavendish thought women needed to be better educated, and could change if they had such an education, she also thought their education should reinforce the feminine virtues. Section III examines Cavendish's notorious “Preface to the Reader” (from The Worlds Olio), where Cavendish claims that women are naturally inferior in strength and intelligence to men. Section IV addresses another notorious Cavendish text, “Female Orations,” arguing that its message is similar to that of the “Preface to the Reader.” Nonetheless, although Cavendish held conventional views about male and female nature and appropriate gender roles, she also recognized how social institutions could limit women's freedom; section V explores the complexities of Cavendish's critique of one such institution, patriarchal marriage. (shrink)

In this rich and detailed study of early modern women's thought, Jacqueline Broad explores the complexity of women's responses to Cartesian philosophy and its intellectual legacy in England and Europe. She examines the work of thinkers such as Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, who were active participants in the intellectual life of their time and were also the respected colleagues of philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. She also illuminates the continuities between (...) early modern women's thought and the anti-dualism of more recent feminist thinkers. The result is a more gender-balanced account of early modern thought than has hitherto been available. Broad's clear and accessible exploration of this still-unfamiliar area will have a strong appeal to both students and scholars in the history of philosophy, women's studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. In Divine Machines, Justin Smith offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. He shows how these (...) wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines.Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, Divine Machines takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here Smith reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. He casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, Smith provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era. (shrink)

In a new introduction, the authors describe how science and its social context were understood when this book was first published, and how the study of the history of science has changed since then.

It is often thought that the numerous contradictory perspectives in Margaret Cavendish's writings demonstrate her inability to reconcile her feminism with her conservative, royalist politics. In this book Lisa Walters challenges this view and demonstrates that Cavendish's ideas more closely resemble republican thought, and that her methodology is the foundation for subversive political, scientific and gender theories. With an interdisciplinary focus Walters closely examines Cavendish's work and its context, providing the reader with an enriched understanding of women's contribution to early (...) modern scientific theory, political philosophy, culture and folklore. Considering also Cavendish's ideas in relation to Hobbes and Paracelsus, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students of literature, philosophy, history of ideas, political theory, gender studies and history of science. (shrink)

In his embryological treatise De plastica seminis facultate , Jacob Schegk , professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Tübingen, developed, through a unique interpretation of the Aristotelian embryology, a theory of the "plastic faculty" , whose origin lay in the Galenic idea of the formative power. The present study analyses the precise nature of Schegk's theory, by setting it in its historical and intellectual context. It will also discuss the hitherto unappreciated Neoplatonic dimension of Schegk's notion of (...) the soul's vehicle. (shrink)

Inspired by Christian Platonism as developed in the late fifteenth-century Florentine milieu, the French physician Jean Fernel proposed a particular interpretation of Galen in a medico-philosophical work entitled On the Hidden Causes of Things. With this interpretation, he responded to the serious and urgent need for a reconciliation of the newly reconstituted Galen of Renaissance humanism with Christian faith. The present study examines Fernel's strategy and method in constructing this singular Galenic body of doctrine, special attention being given to the (...) roles attributed to the Creator, the formative force, and the soul. Subsequently, an analysis of the notions of spirit and of its innate heat as indispensable instruments of Fernel's physiology will uncover the very target of his criticism of materialism. (shrink)

Inspired by Christian Platonism as developed in the late fifteenth-century Florentine milieu, the French physician Jean Fernel proposed a particular interpretation of Galen in a medico-philosophical work entitled On the Hidden Causes of Things . With this interpretation, he responded to the serious and urgent need for a reconciliation of the newly reconstituted Galen of Renaissance humanism with Christian faith. The present study examines Fernel's strategy and method in constructing this singular Galenic body of doctrine, special attention being given to (...) the roles attributed to the Creator, the formative force, and the soul. Subsequently, an analysis of the notions of spirit and of its innate heat as indispensable instruments of Fernel's physiology will uncover the very target of his criticism of materialism. (shrink)

It is well known that Harvey was influenced by Aristotle. This paper seeks to show that Harvey's quantitative argument for the circulation and his analogy of the heart with a pump do not go beyond Aristotle and may even have been inspired by passages in Aristotle. It also considers the fact that Harvey gives much greater prominence to a macrocosm/microcosm analogy between the weather cycle and the circulation of the blood than he does to the pump analogy. This analogy is (...) prominent in both the preface to the king and pivotal chapter eight of De Motu Cordis, and may indicate a significant influence from the Renaissance natural magic tradition. The full implications of this analogy are critical for Harvey's conception of the nature of the circulation, especially the constant interconversion of venous and arterial blood and the passage of blood through the lungs. The tendency to assume that Harvey had a superior method since he made such an important discovery may have led not only to overestimation of the influence from the new science of the seventeenth century, but also to underestimation of influence from the magical tradition. (shrink)

In a short work called De conceptione appended to the end of his Exercitationes de generatione animalium , William Harvey developed a rather strange analogy. To explain how such marvelous productions as living beings were generated from the rather inauspicious ingredients of animal reproduction, Harvey argued that conception in the womb was like conception in the brain. It was mostly rejected at the time; it now seems a ludicrous theory based upon homonymy. However, this analogy offers insight into the structure (...) and function of analogies in early modern natural philosophy. In this essay I hope to not only describe the complex nature of Harvey’s analogy, but also offer a novel interpretation of his use of analogical reasoning, substantially revising the account offered by Guido Giglioni . I discuss two points of conceptual change and negotiation in connection with Harvey’s analogy, understanding it as both a confrontation between the border of the natural and the supernatural, as well as a moment in the history of psychology. My interpretation touches upon a number of important aspects, including why the analogy was rejected, how Harvey systematically deployed analogies according to his notions of natural philosophical method, how the analogy fits into contemporary discussions of analogies in science, and finally, how the analogy must be seen in the context of changing Renaissance notions of the science of the soul, ultimately confronting the problem of how to understand final causality in Aristotelian science. In connection with the last, I conclude the essay by turning to how Harvey embeds the analogy within a natural theological cosmology. (shrink)

In a short work called De conceptione appended to the end of his Exercitationes de generatione animalium, William Harvey developed a rather strange analogy. To explain how such marvelous productions as living beings were generated from the rather inauspicious ingredients of animal reproduction, Harvey argued that conception in the womb was like conception in the brain. It was mostly rejected at the time; it now seems a ludicrous theory based upon homonymy. However, this analogy offers insight into the structure and (...) function of analogies in early modern natural philosophy. In this essay I hope to not only describe the complex nature of Harvey’s analogy, but also offer a novel interpretation of his use of analogical reasoning, substantially revising the account offered by Guido Giglioni. I discuss two points of conceptual change and negotiation in connection with Harvey’s analogy, understanding it as both a confrontation between the border of the natural and the supernatural, as well as a moment in the history of psychology. My interpretation touches upon a number of important aspects, including why the analogy was rejected, how Harvey systematically deployed analogies according to his notions of natural philosophical method, how the analogy fits into contemporary discussions of analogies in science, and finally, how the analogy must be seen in the context of changing Renaissance notions of the science of the soul, ultimately confronting the problem of how to understand final causality in Aristotelian science. In connection with the last, I conclude the essay by turning to how Harvey embeds the analogy within a natural theological cosmology. (shrink)

Harvey and Highmore experimented together on chick fetuses at Oxford in the early 1640s, yet in 1651 published significantly different treatises on generation that emphasize their reliance on observations and dissections of fetal chicks at different stages of incubation. The key differences follow from their views on matter and souls. Harvey conceives of living bodies as governed by Aristotelian souls and faculties. Highmore views matter as made of corpuscles and describes organs as involved in chemical procedures. Highmore's treatise is a (...) response to Digby's claim that heat, moisture, and pressure could explain generation. Although Digby's treatment lacks Harvey's and Highmore's attention to detail, it offers a point of comparison that leads to a more nuanced understanding of their explanation. Moreover, Highmore's dedication of his work to Boyle provides a new perspective on both men's intellectual evolution from the latter part of the 1640s to 1651. (shrink)

The book surveys the key metaphysical contributions of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614–1687).

Lisa T. Sarasohn acutely examines the brilliant work of this untrained mind and explores the unorthodox development of her natural philosophy.

'The church in danger' : latitudinarians, Socinians, and Hobbists -- Animal spirits and living fibres -- Mortalists and materialists -- Journalism, exile, and clandestinity -- Mid-eighteenth-century materialism -- Epilogue : some consequences.