This book is an examination of the metaphysical systems of Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway, who share many superficial similarities. By providing a detailed analysis of their views on substance, monism, self-motion, individuation, and identity over time, as well as causation, perception, and freedom, it demonstrates the interesting ways in which their accounts differ. Seeing their systems in tandem highlights the originality of each philosopher. In addition to providing the details of their metaphysical views, the book also shows how (...) they put these views to use: for Cavendish in grounding her natural philosophy and for Conway in developing her theodicy. The account of Cavendish is more naturalistic than current interpretations. It argues that God plays no substantive role in Cavendish’s philosophy. The book provides an account of Cavendish’s matter and her biological holism. It shows how sensitive and rational matter are expressed differently in different natural kinds. It provides the first account of Cavendish’s views on individuation and identity over time and a detailed account of her views on causation, arguing that nature is the only principal cause. The book also provides an account of Conway’s spiritual substance, arguing that it is a unique type of substance. It discusses Conway’s two types of motions and causation. In addition, a detailed account of her view of motion as a mode of body, and how it is transferred, is provided. Finally, the book concludes that Conway’s metaphysics and morality are inseparable and that she holds a type of perfectionism. (shrink)

Margaret Cavendish is widely known as a materialist. However, since Cavendishian matter is always in motion, “matter” and “motion” are equally important foundational concepts for her natural philosophy. In Philosophical Letters (1664), she takes to task her materialist rival Thomas Hobbes by assaulting his account of accidents in general and his concept of “rest” in particular. In this article, I argue that Cavendish defends her continuous-motion view in two ways: first, she claims that her account avoids seeing accidents (...) as capable of generation and annihilation, which she argues is inconceivable; and second, she contends that according to Hobbes’s own view “rest” is an absurd conception since it cannot be drawn from experience. Beyond its function as a defense, I claim that Cavendish’s focused criticism of “rest” shows that she is a perceptive reader of Hobbes’s natural philosophy, insofar as her criticisms undercut the two a priori principles of Hobbesian physics. Finally, I show how her views developed in more detail in Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1663) and Observations upon Experimental Philosophy ([1666] 2001) avoid the worries she raises for Hobbesian materialism. (shrink)

The nature of light is a focus of Thomas Hobbes’s natural philosophical project. Hobbes’s explanation of the light of lucid bodies differs across his works, from dilation and contraction in Elements of Law to simple circular motions in De corpore. However, Hobbes consistently explains perceived light by positing that bodily resistance generates the phantasm of light. In Letters I.XIX–XX of Philosophical Letters, fellow materialist Margaret Cavendish attacks the Hobbesian understanding of both lux and lumen by claiming that Hobbes has (...) illicitly made abstractions from matter. In this paper, I argue that Cavendish’s criticisms rely on an incorrect understanding of the nature of Hobbesian geometry and the role it plays in Hobbes’s natural philosophy. Rather than understanding geometry as wholly abstract, Hobbes attempts to ground geometry in different ways of considering bodies and their motions. Furthermore, Hobbes’s own criticisms of abstraction suggest that he would share many of the worries she raises but deny that he falls prey to them. (shrink)

Wissenschaft mit Unterschieden: Parodie und Paradies in Margaret Cavendishs The Blazing World (1666). Mit ihrer utopischen Erzählung The Blazing World (1666) ist Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, eine der wenigen Autorinnen der Frühen Neuzeit, die sich sowohl im Feld der Literatur als auch der Naturphilosophie betätigten. Auf den ersten Blick scheint die Welt jenseits des Nordpols, in die die Protagonistin nach gewaltsamer Entführung und Schiffbruch gerät, ein weibliches Wissenschaftsparadies: Nach eilig erfolgter Vermählung mit dem Kaiser regiert sie eigenverantwortlich über (...) die wissenschaftlichen Institutionen ihres Reichs und debattiert mit Bären‐, Vogel‐, Wurmmännern und ähnlichen Hybridwesen über die neuesten wissenschaftlichen Errungenschaften. Bald schon stellt sich jedoch heraus, dass ihre „Wissenschaftler“ denjenigen der englischen Realität sowohl in ihrer blinden Begeisterung für neue Forschungsinstrumente wie in ihrem ermüdenden Austausch von Meinungen und Glaubenssätzen durchaus ähnlich sind. Unterstützung für ihre Kritik und für eigene Forschungs‐ und Schreibprojekte findet die Protagonistin in der Autorin selbst, der Duchess of Newcastle, in deren Welten sich die beiden gemeinsam begeben. Parodie und Satire, die auf zeitgenössische Modetorheiten im Umfeld der Royal Society abzielen, stehen im Fokus des vorliegenden Aufsatzes ebenso wie utopische Perspektiven, die durch die Eröffnung neuer Denkräume entstehen. Auf dem von ironisch kommentierten Fetischen und Hybriderscheinungen gepflasterten Weg dorthin bewegt sich die Erzählung zwischen Realität und Virtualität, Fakten und Fiktionen, kritisiert epistemologische und institutionelle Vorgaben und testet die Grenzen der Geschlechter im neu entstehenden Feld von Wissenschaft und Literatur. Summary: Science With a Difference: Parody and Paradise in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666). Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666) is one of the very few utopian accounts by women in the early modern period. At first sight, the world beyond the North Pole that Cavendish's beautiful heroine enters after surviving abduction and shipwreck seems to offer the utmost in terms of early modern feminine scientific utopias: after the shortest love story in history, the heroine becomes Empress and is given a whole Empire to govern at her pleasure. But soon it turns out that the hybrid creatures of her newly founded scientific communities, bear‐men, bird‐men, worm‐men, and the like are far from utopian truth‐seeking, but, like their earthly counterparts, all too often revel in tedious meaning and believing. The paper will focus on such parodic moments as well as on alternative modes of dealing with science more adequate to the term Paradise. Only with the support of her this‐worldly friend, the Duchess of Newcastle, who also happens to be the author of the story, the Empress can not only improve her utopian state, but also the state of affairs in the real world. On the way, the boundaries between fact and fiction, real and virtual, masculine and feminine, sense and nonsense are continuously tested – reflecting and commenting on early modern fear and fascination of the unknown and the promises of science and technology. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century the new science was introduced through the works of Bacon, Hooke, Boyle, Power, and others. The advocates of the new science promised to divulge the inner workings of nature and to help man overcome his painful fallen state by means of controlling nature. The new sciences of mechanism and corpuscularism were to be based on objective experiments that would reveal the secret inner natures of minerals, vegetables, animals, the sun, moon, and stars. These experiments were done (...) with new and improved telescopes and microscope with magnifications of up to 100 times. One early critic of the new science was Margaret Cavendish. Cavendish was skeptical of the ambitious claims, methodology, instruments, and institutions of the new science. In her work, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, Cavendish argued against “experimental and dioptrical writers,” provided her own account of the natural world, investigated aspects of chemistry, medicine, and the nature of heat and color, as well as many other topics in natural philosophy (OEP 10). While many think Cavendish landed on the wrong side of history with respect to her skepticism regarding microscopes and telescopes, her criticisms of the new science were wide ranging and she was by no means the only one to question the value of such experiments and instruments. While several commentators, like Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish was against all things experimental, several recent commentators, Emma Wilkins (2014) and Deborah Boyle (2018), have tried to show the much more complicated relationship between Cavendish and the Royal Society and medical studies, respectively. In addition, some commentators, such as Lisa Sarasohn (1984, 2010) and Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish’s criticisms of the new science are based on her belief that Nature, as a representation of the feminine, was under attack by the experimentalists desire to “penetrate” and “manipulate” her for their own ends. While it is certainly true that Cavendish and many of the experimentalists personified nature as a woman, and that Cavendish does portray the men as trying to make her into something she is not, I agree with Deborah Boyle (2004) that these descriptions are not the focus of her objections to experimentalism. Rather than hold that Cavendish is concerned with, as Sarasohn claims, “the sexual implications for both women and nature of the new philosophy” (2010: 147), it seems that Cavendish’s objections were largely based on her philosophical commitments. However, I believe there is one aspect of the new science that Cavendish does critique from a feminist perspective, and that is what she sees as its institutional nature and its exclusion of women on the basis of sex, and to this I will turn in the last section of the chapter.1 My aim is to address Cavendish’s three major critiques of the new science. The chapter is divided as follows: The first section provides a brief overview of Cavendish’s views on the nature of bodies and perception. The second regards her critique of the methods and aims of the new science as represented by Bacon and Boyle. The third section examines her critique of Hooke and the instruments of experimentalism. The final section lays out her feminist critique of the institution of the new science. (shrink)

Nature, according to Cavendish, has “an Infinite Natural power, that is, a power to produce infinite effects in her own self, by infinite changes of Motions.” While Cavendish mentions powers with respect to human beings, medicines, occasional causes, and other entities, these powers are really just the power of self-moving matter to cause changes in the world. This chapter examines why Cavendish attributes the power of self-motion to matter, what this power is, how it arose, how it (...) is enacted, and its limitations. In doing so, it discusses her views on causation, perception, and motion, and argues that motion is not reducible to change in mereological facts. (shrink)

Offers comprehensive treatment of Thomas Hobbes’s thought, providing readers with different ways of understanding Hobbes as a systematic philosopher As one of the founders of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes is best known for his ideas regarding the nature of legitimate government and the necessity of society submitting to the absolute authority of sovereign power. Yet Hobbes produced a wide range of writings, from translations of texts by Homer and Thucydides, to interpretations of Biblical books, to works devoted to geometry, (...) optics, morality, and religion. Hobbes viewed himself as presenting a unified method for theoretical and practical science—an interconnected system of philosophy that provides many entry points into his thought. A Companion to Hobbes is an expertly curated collection of essays offering close textual engagement with the thought of Thomas Hobbes in his major works while probing his ideas regarding natural philosophy, mathematics, human nature, civil philosophy, religion, and more. The Companion discusses the ways in which scholars have tried to understand the unity and diversity of Hobbes’s philosophical system and examines the reception of the different parts of Hobbes’s philosophy by thinkers such as René Descartes, Margaret Cavendish, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Presenting a diversity of fresh perspectives by both emerging and established scholars, this volume: Provides a comprehensive treatment of Hobbes’s thought in his works, including Elements of Law, Elements of Philosophy, and Leviathan Explores the connecting points between Hobbes’ metaphysics, epistemology, mathematics, natural philosophy, morality, and civil philosophy Offers readers strategies for understanding how the parts of Hobbes’s philosophical system fit together Examines Hobbes’s philosophy of mathematics and his attempts to understand geometrical objects and definitions Considers Hobbes’s philosophy in contexts such as the natural state of humans, gender relations, and materialist worldviews Challenges conceptions of Hobbes’s moral theory and his views about the rights of sovereigns Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Hobbes is an invaluable resource for scholars and advanced students of Early modern thought, particularly those from disciplines such as History of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Intellectual History, History of Politics, Political Theory, and English. (shrink)

This edited volume will be of interest to specialists in the history of early modern philosophy and in the history and philosophy of science. It contains ten chapters related to the themes of experimental philosophy, speculative philosophy, and the relationships of both to religion. Most of the book considers these themes in the thought of six early modern philosophers, with a chapter for each of the following: Bacon, Boyle, Cavendish, Hobbes, Locke, and Newton. The remaining chapters focus upon these (...) themes by looking at particular debates or more broadly by considering contexts beyond those of the six aforementioned philosophers. The level of attention to detail by the authors in this book regarding how... (shrink)

Nature, according to Cavendish, has “an Infinite Natural power, that is, a power to produce infinite effects in her own self, by infinite changes of Motions” (OEP II.XIV: 220). While Cavendish mentions powers with respect to human beings, medicines, occasional causes, and other entities, these powers are really just the power of self-moving matter to cause changes in the world. This paper examines why Cavendish attributes the power self-motion to matter, what this power is, how it arose, (...) how it is enacted, and its limitations. In doing so, I discuss her views on causation, perception, and motion, and argue that motion is not reducible to change in mereological facts. (shrink)

Hobbes' classic work has set the tone for the course of political philosophy through to our own day. This new Broadview edition includes the full text of the 1651 edition, together with a wide variety of background documents that help set the work in context. Also included are an introduction, explanatory notes, and a chronology.

Thomas Hobbes’s _Leviathan_ is the greatest work of political philosophy in English and the first great work of philosophy in English. Beginning with premises that were sometimes controversial, such as that every human action is caused by the agent’s desire for his own good, Hobbes derived shocking conclusions, such as that the civil government enjoys absolute control over its citizens and that the sovereign has the right to determine which religion is to be practiced in a commonwealth. Hobbes’s contemporaries recognized (...) the power of arguments in _Leviathan_ and many of them wrote responses to it; selections by John Bramhall, Robert Filmer, Edward Hyde, George Lawson, William Lucy, Samuel Pufendorf, and Thomas Tenison are included in this edition. This revised Broadview Edition of Hobbes’s classic work of political philosophy includes the full text of Part I (Of Man), Part II (Of Commonwealth), and the Review and Conclusion. The appendices, which set the work in its historical context, include a rich selection of contemporary responses to _Leviathan_. Also included are an introduction, explanatory notes, and a chronology of Hobbes’s life. (shrink)

This Broadview edition of Hobbes's classic work of political philosophy includes the full text of Part I, Part II, and the Review and Conclusion. The appendices, which set the work in its historical context, include a rich selection of contemporary responses to Leviathan. Also included are an introduction, explanatory notes, and a chronology of Hobbes's life. Please note that the Broadview Edition of the complete Leviathan also remains available.

Aristotle's definition of the soul should be interpreted as: 'the soul is the entelechy of a natural body that serves as its instrument'.

This essay lays the groundwork for a novel conception of autonomy that may be called “effective autonomy”—a conception designed to be genuinely action guiding in bioethics. As empirical psychology research on the heuristics and biases approach shows, decision making commonly fails to correspond to people’s desires because of the biases arising from bounded cognition. People who are classified as autonomous on contemporary philosophical accounts may fail to be effectively autonomous because their decisions are uncoupled from their autonomous desires. Accordingly, continuing (...) attempts to value patient autonomy must go beyond existing philosophical conceptions of autonomy to consider the background conditions of human decision making. (shrink)

Epistemic trust is an unacknowledged feature of medical knowledge. Claims of medical knowledge made by physicians, patients, and others require epistemic trust. And yet, it would be foolish to define all epistemic trust as epistemically responsible. Accordingly, I use a routine example in medical practice to illustrate how epistemically responsible trust in medicine is trust in epistemically responsible individuals. I go on to illustrate how certain areas of current medical practice of medicine fall short of adequately distinguishing reliable and unreliable (...) processes because of a failure to systematically evaluate health outcomes. I conclude by articulating the devastating obstacles to the consilience assumption, which takes intellectual character as the standard for epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

This article, written in honor of Fritz Rohrlich, briefly surveys the role of topology in physics.

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

Many of the most serious crimes that fall within the justificatory scope of the harm principle do so constitutively. They do so in the sense that the harm that the crime is designed to prevent is a...

We consider the meaning of the assignment of probabilities to events implied by the kind of model regularly used by Statisticians. Traditional frequentist understandings are reviewed and rejected. It is argued that many statistical models may be justified purely on the basis of the symmetry properties enjoyed by the observables being modelled.

Quantum theories constructed on the noncommutative spacetime called the Groenewold–Moyal plane exhibit many interesting properties such as Lorentz and CPT noninvariance, causality violation and twisted statistics. We show that such violations lead to many striking features that may be tested experimentally. These theories predict Pauli forbidden transitions due to twisted statistics, anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation due to correlations of observables in spacelike regions and Lorentz and CPT violations in scattering amplitudes.

In animal husbandry in The Netherlands, as in a wide variety of other societal areas, we see an increased awareness of the fact that progress cannot be attained anymore by simply repeating the way we modernized this sector in the decades before, due to the multiplicity of the problems to be dealt with. The theory of reflexive modernization articulates this macro-social phenomenon, and at the same time serves as a prescriptive master-narrative. In this paper, I analyse the relationship between Feenberg's (...) instrumentalization theory and reflexive design; that is, the approach of doing reflexive modernization. Feenberg's analytical distinction between primary and secondary instrumentalization is useful in highlighting the way social and political values are inscribed into technological arrangements, but is not meant as a method. Reflexive design, on the other hand, is meant to be a reflective and deliberative method that aims to articulate, assess and reintegrate hitherto unquestioned values and presuppositions into new designs of production systems. Reflexive design thus may be seen as a conscious strategy of making explicit the separate stages of instrumentalization in advance, instead of criticizing the implicit embedding of dominant values in technological artefacts once they have been realized. The approach is illustrated with a case from animal husbandry. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE A 'DREAMING KRONOS' IN A LOST WORK BY ARISTOTLE In the following study we shall be concerned with the interpretation of dreams. ...