Part of nature and division in Margaret Cavendish’s materialism

Shaheen, Jonathan L.

doi:10.1007/s11229-017-1326-y

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…42 Cavendish is most naturally read as thinking that division and composition are kinds of local motion. 43 Production and dissolution are potential consequences of such local motions: compositions result in productions when new unified complex bodies are produced, whereas divisions result in dissolution when unified complex bodies are dissolved, as when creatures die. 44 Significantly, Cavendish is willing to talk in terms of "artificial productions" ( [25], Part 1, ch.…”

Section: Mere Rearrangement Production and Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…xxiv-xxv. On the identification of animate matter and self-motion in Cavendish's mature works, see [43], pp. 3554-3555.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This identification implies a more trivial conception of wholes than the substantive conception of unified complex bodies with which this paper operates. 43 Ref. [69] denies that composition and division are local motions on the basis of Cavendish's denial that bodies can change places (Section 2.2), and argues that all motion for Cavendish is rather mereological change or "compositional motion" (Section 3.1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A Vitalist Shoal in the Mechanist Tide: Art, Nature, and 17th-Century Science

Shaheen

2022

Philosophies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper reconstructs Margaret Cavendish’s theory of the metaphysics of artifacts. It situates her anti-mechanist account of artifactual production and the art-nature distinction against a background of Aristotelian, Scholastic, and mechanist theories. Within this broad context, it considers what Cavendish thinks artisans can actually do, grounding her terminological stipulation that there is no genuine generation in nature in a commitment to natural and artistic production as the mere rearrangement of bodies. Bodies themselves are identified, in a conceptually Ockhamist manner, with their figures, so that the resulting theory of mere rearrangement is Scholastically respectable. The paper also offers literal interpretations, focused narrowly on the philosophical content of her theories of art and artifacts, of her claims that art concerns only “nature’s sporting or playing actions”, that its products are “deformed and defective”, and that they are “at best …mixt or hermaphroditical."

show abstract

Section: Mere Rearrangement Production and Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…xxiv-xxv. On the identification of animate matter and self-motion in Cavendish's mature works, see [43], pp. 3554-3555.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A Vitalist Shoal in the Mechanist Tide: Art, Nature, and 17th-Century Science

Shaheen

2022

Philosophies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the ontological status of parts in Cavendish's metaphysics, seePeterman 2019, Shaheen 2019, and Georgescu 2021 …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodies and Their Potential Parts: The Not-So-Friendly Reception of Digbean Quantity

Georgescu

2022

International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives Internationales d'Histoire Des Idées

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To Digby's contemporaries, he is a corpusculairan philosopher committed to mechanical explanations. Typically, both corpuscularianism and mechanism are taken to entail a commitment to actual parts. However, Digby rejects actualism about parts, and endorses strong potentialism. The result puzzled his contemporaries. This chapter investigates how some of his readers responded to him on this point, with the purpose of clarifying how his corpuscularianism and mechanism play out in the context of his potentialism. I argue that, rather than the impediment to corpuscularianism and mechanism that it might seem, Digby's potentialism allows him to circumvent various problems that arise in other models.

show abstract

“…See also 181, See JonathanShaheen (2017) for an argument that Descartes and Cavendish have different views about the nature of matter.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Margaret Cavendish on Human Beings

Lascano¹,

Schliesser²

2022

Human

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Margaret Cavendish is a vitalist, materialist, and monist. She holds that human beings and other natural kinds are parts of the one material entity, “nature.” While human beings may not be superior to other animals in many ways, Cavendish does think that human beings have a type of knowledge and perception that is unique to their kind, that they strive for the continuance of their being, and that they join together into societies in order to achieve a more peaceful existence. This essay considers the formation of human beings, how their perception and knowledge differ from other nonhuman animals, how human beings are individuated, and in what sense they can be immortal. Finally, the essay argues that Cavendish’s views about the social nature of human beings mirror her views about the metaphysical structure of nature. The essay shows that Cavendish embraces natural and social hierarchy alongside a form of sexual equality that the essay dubs “Platonic feminism.”

show abstract

Part of nature and division in Margaret Cavendish’s materialism

Cited by 12 publications

References 13 publications

A Vitalist Shoal in the Mechanist Tide: Art, Nature, and 17th-Century Science

A Vitalist Shoal in the Mechanist Tide: Art, Nature, and 17th-Century Science

Bodies and Their Potential Parts: The Not-So-Friendly Reception of Digbean Quantity

Margaret Cavendish on Human Beings

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About