Margaret Cavendish And The Scientific Revolution

During the seventeenth century, the scientific revolution in Europe was at its peak, changing people’s lives through the new techniques of the scientific method. Citizens of western civilizations had previously used religion as the lens through which they perceived their beliefs and customs in their communities. Before the scientific revolution, science and religion were intertwined, and people were taught to accept religious laws and doctrines without questioning; the Church was the ultimate authority on how the world worked. However, during this revolution, scientists were inspired to learn and understand the laws of the universe had created, a noble and controversial move toward truth seeking. The famous scientists of the time, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, were known to be natural philosophers, intending to reveal God’s mystery and understand (through proof) the majesty of God. Throughout previous centuries, people had hypothesized how the world and natural phenomenon may work, and new Protestant ideals demanded constant interrogation and examination. Nevertheless, some of these revelations went against the Church’s teachings and authority. If people believed the Church could be wrong, then they could question everything around them, as well. As a result, the introduction of the scientific method, a process by which scientists discovered and proved new theories, was revolutionary because it distinguished what could be proved as real from what was simply

Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution provides a comprehensive breakdown of the discoveries that defined the Scientific Revolution and the history behind them. The story of the scientific revolution truly begins with a separation between the Catholic Church and the denizens of Europe brought on by the Protestant Reformation. This separation led directly to the questioning of the church and what they deemed to be true. The growing suspicion of the church applied not only to the politics and religious views but the scientific “facts” the church was built upon. The suspicion of these scientific facts quickly grew to an open challenging of these facts, The Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is something we have all studied in our grade school years and the discoveries of people such as Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei are well documented and arguably common knowledge but Jardine’s book Ingenious Pursuits encapsulates the scientific revolution in a new light. Jardine accomplishes this by telling the stories of some of the greatest achievements of the Scientific Revolution. These stories reveal the collaborations of some of histories most brilliant minds as well as the secrecy amongst them and uncover the motives that fueled many of these accomplishments.

In the book “ The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction”, Lawrence Principe discusses the general occurring events of the scientific revolution, and overviews various in-depth details in relation to those events. People at the time highly focused on the meanings and causes of their surrounds, as their motive was to “control, improve and exploit” (Principe 2) the world. In his work, Principe has successfully supported the notion that the Scientific Revolution stood as a period in time where one's innovation would drive improvements towards change and continuity of future innovations, along with changes of tradition. His statement is strongly backed by his detailed and particular order of events throughout the book. Nevertheless, certain details that lead beyond the necessary background are found, as they do not appertain to the general line of the book, but rather for background knowledge.

During the Middle Ages, except for those in religious positions, women were only seen as three things, which were daughter, wife, and mother. But in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, new opportunities in learning humanism arose for only those in the higher class families. Even though they started to educate themselves, the majority had no rights whatsoever in money matters as well as estate. From the 17th century and up to the scientific revolution, women’s rights had consistently been improving. However, during the revolution, the study of the human body brought to attention that the male brain is quite larger than that of a female. This revelation set back the female race back to a limited role, but this time this setback was

Another important figure in the Scientific Revolution was Galileo Galilei. He was an Italian born professor of mathematics who had a great interest in the workings of the universe. Galileo served as a professor at the University of Padua, and it was during this time that he began to question the accuracy of the Churches representation of the world. Galileo’s approach towards knowledge was much different then the afore mentioned Copernicus. Where as Copernicus presented his finding to the mercy of the church, Galileo wrote his conclusions and left the Roman Catholic Church interpret them as they chose. The very nature of his findings pitted him as an opponent of the church.

"The growth of commerce and industry led to the technological advances, which in turn stimulated, and were stimulated by science.” (p. 403) The European scientific revolution was fueled by the blending of “liberal” and “servile” arts, in other words, science and technology. Because of the European expansion taking place throughout the world, new commerce and industries were advancing, creating the need for new technology and science. The theories and inventions that Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton provided were the fist major advances during the scientific revolution, and perhaps were the most profound.

Scientists realized that they could collaborate to learn more about science. They met in salons and libraries to discuss science and philosophy. Henry Oldenbury, the Secretary of the English Royal Society, when writing a letter to Johannes Hevelius, another scientist, says that Friendship among learned men is a great aid to the investigation and elucidation of the truth.....Philosophy would then be raised to its greatest heights” (Document 6). Henry was part of the Royal Society which was supposed to expand the natural knowledge of England. So, he was very interested in these scientific communities because he knew that it would increase his knowledge exponentially. Even though many liked these scientific communities, many women didn’t like how they weren’t included, not only communities, but also academies. Margaret Cavendish, an English natural philosopher said in her book, Observations on Experimental Philosphy, “I might sset up my own school of natural philosophy. But I, being a woman, do fear they would soon cast me out of their schools.... Nay, could it be done so handsomely, they would turn all from females into males, so great is grown the self-conceit of the masculine and the disgregard of the female sex” (Document 9). Cavendish thinks that she has a lot to say about philosophy, but, when she realizes that no one will listen to her and she can’t collaborate to many others because she is

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a period of many changes in world of sciences. Usually the philosophes and researchers of the sciences were either supported or reprimanded by many aspects of life in these centuries. The work of scientists was affected by governments promoting, but also preventing, research of the sciences, religious bodies promoting or condemning the outcomes of experiments and theories and even merging outcomes to religious ideas, and also new relationships between scientists across Europe, but also with a neglect of women.

This essay will explore parallels between the ideas of the scientific revolution and the enlightenment. The scientific revolution describes a time when great changes occurred in the way the universe was viewed, d through the advances of sciences during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The enlightenment refers to a movement that grew out of the new scientific ideas of the revolution that occurred in the late seventeenth to eighteenth century. Although both the scientific revolution and enlightenment encapsulate different ideas, the scientific revolution laid the underlying ideological foundations for the enlightenment movement. A number of parallels

While Renaissance academics embraced the innovations of humanity to reason the purpose of life, seventeenth century scientists progressed beyond the abstraction of philosophy towards the concrete origins of humanity. With the potential to derive the foundation of the human experience, Europe embarked on a successive intellectual revolution, known colloquially as the Scientific Revolution. As scientists charted a new reality grounded in empirical evidence, the universally accepted explanations of biology, astronomy, and physics of Ancient Greece were systematically disproven. Contrary to previous academic rebirths, women were allowed to partake in exploration in a limited capacity. While the Scientific Revolution was characterized

The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, which spanned from the late 1500’s to 1700’s, shaped today’s modern world through disregarding past information and seeking answers on their own through the scientific method and other techniques created during the Enlightenment. Newton’s ‘Philsophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ and Diderot’s Encyclopedia were both composed of characteristics that developed this time period through the desire to understand all life, humans are capable of understanding the Earth, and a sense of independence from not having to rely on the nobles or church for knowledge.

At its climax the scientific revolution would bring enormous change with the revolutionary contributions made by Isaac Newton. Newton, building on previous works produced the concepts of gravity, and he developed the three laws of motion which could be accurately proved through mathematical calculations. These discoveries about the natural world would serve to mend past uncertainties which in turn gave people real hope. It was the beginning of an end of Europe’s dark times and the birth of many new innovations and developments that were to come in the eighteenth century. It was truly a new age where through reason one could become fully become enlightened.

Margaret Cavendish truly had faith in the female spirit, and she felt that women were never given the credit they deserved.  Cavendish wholeheartedly believed that women could comprehend philosophy and politics as well as men, and that they should be allowed to study these subjects freely.  In addition, she called for the independence of women from masculine restrictions.  Because of this, feminism abounded in her thoughts and works.  In The Blazing World, Margaret Cavendish shows that women are capable of ruling a world effectively when power is given to them.  She also shows that women are capable of excelling in a created world within their minds, free of limitations set by men.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed a colossal transition in the scientific view of the universe. During this period a profound rethinking of scientific theory as well as moral and religious matters took place. Traditional ideas were reconsidered by religious thinkers. Philosophers began applying rational scientific thought to problems that they considered. The main concept of the Scientific Revolution was to "question everything". The Scientific Revolution was an elaborate movement. Many brilliant people with a wealth of new ideas contributed to this movement. The French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist Rene Descartes was one of these people.