Poems and Fancies

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s poems and other short pieces. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: atomism; empty space; active regions of the world that we do not notice; the ideas that occur to us and why; animal knowledge; insect knowledge; peace and conflict; gender; imaginary worlds; poetry; animal cruelty; and the treatment of nature. The poems on atomism reflect a view that Cavendish entertained early on and then abandoned in favor of her animist view that bodies are not only divisible, but also active, perceptive, and knowledgeable. A common theme across other poems is the sophistication of nonhuman creatures, for example in “A Dialogue between an Oake, and a Man cutting him downe,” “A Morall Discourse betwixt Man, and Beast,” “Of the Ant,” and “Of Fishes.”

Grounds of Natural Philosophy

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Grounds of Natural Philosophy. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: materialism; empty space and the impossibility of vacuum; the identity of a body and its location; the impossibility of immaterial motion; the different kinds of matter; order vs. disorder; active regions of the world that we do not notice; self-motion; self-knowledge; panpsychism; sensory perception and patterning; dreams; occasionalism; causality; chance; freedom, the cooperation of the parts of nature; individuation; natural productions vs. artefacts; imagination; fame; the afterlife; God; and belief in the existence of God. Cavendish enters into a wide spectrum of philosophical debates in Grounds of Natural Philosophy, but much of the focus is on arguments for materialism, the distinction between rational matter and sensitive matter, the knowledge and information that is shared among creatures, individuation, and the sophistication of natural (as opposed to artificial) productions.

Introduction

This chapter is an introduction to the central philosophical views and arguments that Cavendish advances, and it also includes a brief biography. The chapter foreshadows Cavendish’s views, in part by quoting select texts in which she discusses, for example, the activity and intelligence that are ubiquitous in the natural world; the material nature of all creatures (including human beings and their thinking minds); God; the order, organization, and teleology of the natural world; the transfer of motion; sensory perception; embodied intelligence; conscious vs. unconscious thinking; ideas; causation; imagination; freedom; fame; gender; agency and authority; social and political capital; and the interdependence of creatures, among other topics.

Fiction

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s stories and plays. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: agency; authority; imagination; rhetoric; gender; feminism; social and political capital; the interdependence of creatures; government; war; materialism; the relationship between mind and body; ideas as imagistic pictures; theology; and poetry. In Blazing World, perhaps the first piece of science fiction ever written, Cavendish has her main character (eventually the Empress) transported to an alternate world whose inhabitants take seriously the prospect of a woman in a position of authority, for example as a scientist, mathematician, military strategist, and philosopher. In Bell in Campo, Lady Victoria is regarded as a military authority by a critical mass of the women in her community; she leads them to battle, executes a clever strategy to steal weapons from the enemy, and rescues the male army from defeat. In The She-Anchoret, the main character receives audience after audience of individuals who seek her wisdom and counsel on matters scientific, philosophical, mathematical, political, and theological, to name just a few. All three characters inhabit counterfactual environments that are not antagonistic to the development and reception of their skills and capacities, and they flourish.

Worlds Olio

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Worlds Olio. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: whether or not there are inherent capability differences between men and women; gender; similarities and differences between human beings and (other) animals; happiness; fame; desire; self-love; forms of government; social order; the authority and reach of philosophy; the role of the senses in cognition; medical experimentation and disease; God; predestination; and the regularity that is exhibited in the natural world. The chapter begins with a preface in which Cavendish speaks very negatively of the capacities of women, at one point saying that “Women have no strength nor light of Understanding, but what is given them from Men.” The reader can decide against the background of other texts in the corpus whether Cavendish is embracing an anti-feminist position here or whether she is being ironic.

Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: the divisibility of body; empty space and the impossibility of vacuum; the reliability of scientific instrumentation; the reliability and sophistication of natural sense organs; artefacts vs. natural productions; the knowledge and know-how that are ubiquitous in nature; creation; annihilation; the interdependence of creatures; color; materialism; the nature of ideas; representation; God; belief in the existence of God; the limits of knowledge; death and regeneration; creation; gender; order vs. disorder; atomism; motion; freedom; the impossibility of incorporeal motion; panpsychism; action at a distance; action by contact; sensory perception and patterning; rational perception; embodied cognition; self-knowledge; self-motion; the different kinds of matter; animal knowledge; and the eternity of matter. Cavendish begins Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy by repeating the claim that there is no inherent difference between women and men with respect to intellectual capacities. The book treats a wide range of topics, but a central undercurrent is that matter is eternal and that bodies are sophisticated and have the wherewithal to bring about organization and order on their own.

Philosophical Letters

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Philosophical Letters. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes; the philosophy of René Descartes; the philosophy of Henry More; the science of Constantijn Huygens; gender; the role of theology in philosophy; God; the inconceivability of God; empty space and the impossibility of vacuum; the identity of a body and its location; materialism; the eternity of matter; creation; sensory perception; patterning; animal knowledge; freedom; motion; the transfer of motion; the impossibility of immaterial motion; embodied cognition; laws of nature; the spirit of nature; vitalism and the activity of matter; panpsychism; the struggle for bodies to maintain their structural integrity; individuation; death and regeneration; imagination; certainty; action at a distance; action by contact; the natural soul of the human being; the supernatural soul of a human being; how to read scripture; illegitimate uses of scripture; order vs. disorder; the interdependence of the bodies of nature; natural magic; occasional causation; medicine; and the limits of science. Philosophical Letters is not an actual correspondence in which Cavendish has a thorough and extended exchange with Descartes, Hobbes, More, and Van Helmont. Such a back-and-forth was presumably not in the cards, in part because of gender norms surrounding the question of who should engage in intellectual disputation with whom. In Philosophical Letters Cavendish engages a fictional correspondence between herself and a “Madam” who has asked her to comment on the work of all four philosophers.

Philosophical and Physical Opinions

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Philosophical and Physical Opinions. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: whether or not there are inherent capability differences between men and women; gender; atomism; whether or not goodness and badness are objective qualities in the natural world; empty space and the impossibility of vacuum; the struggle for creatures to maintain their structural integrity; striving; individuation; creation; annihilation; chance; causation; teleology; knowledge; motion; perception; mental illness and the brain; and physicians and disease. The chapter begins with a note that Cavendish writes “To the Two Universities” in which she says that the main reason for differences in the skills and capacities of women and men is that men have put into place structures that make it impossible for women to develop and flourish. She also looks ahead to a future time when different structures will be in place and the self-same work that she has produced in the seventeenth century will have an opportunity to secure a foothold.