The Writings Of Margaret Cavendish

During the 1600’s many women writers would anonymously write their books because being an intelligent women in the public eye was considered very taboo, Margaret Cavendish was the first women to break this taboo, she not only wrote her name on the cover of her books but actually put her picture on the cover. She wrote about many things including, naturalism, materialism, God, rights of women, and intelligent matter. She influenced many women philosophers through her writing.

Margaret Lucas was born in 1623 in Colchester, Essex, England. During her youth margaret was very shy and was an avid reader. She grew up in a time where women were not offered a formal education, so she grew up without any formal education and learned things from a
Natural philosophy is the philosophy of nature. She was very interested in the sciences of nature and wrote many books about it. Some of her Ideas in natural philosophy was something called materialism. She believed that nature was one infinite material thing, which she described as ¨The substance of infinite matter.¨ This infinite material substance is composed of an infinite number of material parts, with infinite degrees of motion. She believed that the whole universe was made from the same type of substance. Everything is just in various degrees of motion and different combinations of matter. Everything is matter moving or matter that had been moved. She did not believe in atoms(mechanism), she famously said,¨wherefore, if there should be a composition of atoms, it would not be a body made of parts, but of so many whole and entire single bodies, meeting together as a swarm of bees...and the concourse of them would rather cause a confusion, than a conformity in nature” (Ch. 31, 129 from the book Grounds of Natural Philosophy). She believed that atoms were not soulless parts that made a whole, but tiny holes that come together to create an even bigger whole. She also believed that the human mind had two minds, the material mind and the supernatural immortal mind. Margaret was also a believer of stoicism and was a avid follower. She said, “there can be no order, method or harmony,
Margaret said that all life posses motion, animals show external motions by running, jumping, and walking. While plants possessed internal motion by vibrating, contracting, and dilating. She stated that the more movement a life makes the more rational and self aware it is. She believed that motion ment life and motion ment knowledge. This belief lead her to become a strong believer in Vitalism. Vitalism is the believe that the origin and phenomena are dependent on the forces of nature. Another philosophical theory she believed in was Panpsychism, the theory that view consciousness, mind or soul as a universal and primordial feature of all things. Throughout her work, Cavendish argues that whatever has motion has knowledge and that knowledge is innate or internally directed motion. In her Philosophical Fancies in 1653, she explains that, ¨the touch of the heel, or any part of the body else, is the like motion, as the thought thereof in the head; the one is the motion of the sensitive spirits, the other in the rational spirits, as touch from the sensitive spirits, for thought is only a strong touch, and touch a weak thought. So sense is a weak knowledge, and knowledge a strong sense, made by the degrees of the spirits.¨ (Chapter 45). She said that by moving your body and touching or doing something you have to be thinking about it first, so it proves that when something moves there has to be a thought behind it. The final