CONTEXT AND SCOPE OF MARGARET CAVENDISH’S CRITIC OF EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

In this paper, we want to picture an aspect of the discussion between speculative and experimental philosophy in Seventeenth- Century, through Margaret Cavendish’s position. Though her works has been studied from the Literature approach and as one of the first feminist figures in History, her side as a natural philosopher has been recently studied and it’s been underlined the merit of her speculative philosophy, that seeks to understand the physical world through rational principles.

In that sense, we stand that Cavendish and her contemporaries, was plenty aware of the tension between speculative and experimental knowledge. However, the Cavendish’s natural philosophy originality allow her to stablish an onto-epistemological material and organicist ground, that open other methodological possibilities for the research of natural world.