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Cavendish and Conway on the individual human mindIn Rebecca Copenhaver (ed.), History of the Philosophy of Mind, Vol. 4: Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern and Modern Ages, Routledge. 2018.
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44The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy (edited book)Routledge. 2023.An outstanding reference source for the wide range of philosophical contributions made by women writing in Europe from about 1560 to 1780. It shows the range of genres and methods used by women writing in these centuries in Europe, thus encouraging an expanded understanding of our historical canon.
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36Philosophy, Academic and PublicPrecollege Philosophy and Public Practice 4 91-109. 2022.In 2020, the University of Pennsylvania instituted a graduate certificate in public philosophy. In many ways, this certificate formalized and recognized the public engagement work that graduate students in the philosophy department and beyond had been involved with for some years. One element of the certificate, however, was pivotal in moving our work in public philosophy forward in important ways. This element is the research seminar in public philosophy. In this paper, we recount the motivatio…Read more
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Margaret Cavendish on laws and orderIn Emily Thomas (ed.), Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
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11The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish by Deborah BoyleReview of Metaphysics 73 (2): 355-357. 2019.
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39Du Ch'telet and Descartes on the Roles of Hypothesis and Metaphysics in Natural PhilosophyIn Eileen O’Neill & Marcy P. Lascano (eds.), Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought, Springer. pp. 97-127. 2019.In this chapter, I examine similarities and divergences between Du Châtelet and Descartes on their endorsement of the use of hypotheses in science, using the work of Condillac to locate them in his scheme of systematizers. I conclude that, while Du Châtelet is still clearly a natural philosopher, as opposed to modern scientist, her conception of hypotheses is considerably more modern than is Descartes’, a difference that finds its roots in their divergence on the nature of first principles.
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Atomism, Monism, and Causation in the Natural Philosophy of Margaret CavendishIn Daniel Garber & Steven Nadler (eds.), Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume 3, Clarendon Press. 2006.
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1Generation and the Individual in Descartes, Malebranche and LeibnizDissertation, University of Toronto (Canada). 2001.This dissertation is an examination of the emergence of the preformation doctrine of generation in three early modern philosophers: Descartes, Malebranche and Leibniz. Received wisdom on this question maintains that the preformation doctrine became so popular in the seventeenth century because it seemed most capable of explaining generation of living beings within the limits of the reigning mechanical philosophy. This dissertation considers another motivation, generally neglected by commentators…Read more
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7993Reason and Freedom: Margaret Cavendish on the order and disorder of natureArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 89 (2): 157-191. 2007.According to Margaret Cavendish the entire natural world is essentially rational such that everything thinks in some way or another. In this paper, I examine why Cavendish would believe that the natural world is ubiquitously rational, arguing against the usual account, which holds that she does so in order to account for the orderly production of very complex phenomena (e.g. living beings) given the limits of the mechanical philosophy. Rather, I argue, she attributes ubiquitous rationality to th…Read more
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1699Explanation and demonstration in the Haller-Wolff debateIn Justin E. H. Smith (ed.), The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2006.The theories of pre-existence and epigenesis are typically taken to be opposing theories of generation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One can be a pre-existence theorist only if one does not espouse epigenesis and vice versa. It has also been recognized, however, that the line between pre-existence and epigenesis in the nineteenth century, at least, is considerably less sharp and clear than it was in earlier centuries. The debate (1759-1777) between Albrecht von Haller and Caspar F…Read more
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3866Margaret Cavendish and Thomas Hobbes on Freedom, Education, and WomenIn Nancy J. Hirschmann & Joanne Harriet Wright (eds.), Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes, Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 149-168. 2012.In this paper, I argue that Margaret Cavendish’s account of freedom, and the role of education in freedom, is better able to account for the specifics of women’s lives than are Thomas Hobbes’ accounts of these topics. The differences between the two is grounded in their differing conceptions of the metaphysics of human nature, though the full richness of Cavendish’s approach to women, their minds and their freedom can be appreciated only if we take account of her plays, accepting them as philoso…Read more
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1663Biology and Theology in Malebranche's Theory of Organic GenerationIn Ohad Nachtomy & Justin E. H. Smith (eds.), The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy, Oup Usa. pp. 137-156. 2014.This paper has two parts: In the first part, I give a general survey of the various reasons 17th and 18th century life scientists and metaphysicians endorsed the theory of pre-existence according to which God created all living beings at the creation of the universe, and no living beings are ever naturally generated anew. These reasons generally fall into three categories. The first category is theological. For example, many had the desire to account for how all humans are stained by original si…Read more
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312Susan Bordo, ed., Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 20 (2): 87-89. 2000.
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303JA Cover and John O'Leary-Hawthorne, Substance and Individuation in Leibniz Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 22 (1): 19-21. 2002.
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4315Atomism, Monism, and Causation in the Natural Philosophy of Margaret CavendishOxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 3 199-240. 2006.Between 1653 and 1655 Margaret Cavendish makes a radical transition in her theory of matter, rejecting her earlier atomism in favour of an infinitely-extended and infinitely-divisible material plenum, with matter being ubiquitously self-moving, sensing, and rational. It is unclear, however, if Cavendish can actually dispense of atomism. One of her arguments against atomism, for example, depends upon the created world being harmonious and orderly, a premise Cavendish herself repeatedly undermines…Read more
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897Du Châtelet and Descartes on the Role of Hypothesis and Metaphysics in ScienceIn Eileen O’Neill & Marcy P. Lascano (eds.), Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought, Springer. 2019.In this chapter, I examine similarities and divergences between Du Châtelet and Descartes on their endorsement of the use of hypotheses in science, using the work of Condillac to locate them in his scheme of systematizers. I conclude that, while Du Châtelet is still clearly a natural philosopher, as opposed to modern scientist, her conception of hypotheses is considerably more modern than is Descartes’, a difference that finds its roots in their divergence on the nature of first principles.
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32Review of Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (11). 2006.
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703Emilie du Châtelet between Leibniz and NewtonBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (1): 207-209. 2013.British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 207-209, January 2013
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234Review of Catherine Wilson and Desmond M. Clarke (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2011.
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141Supernaturalism, occasionalism, and preformation in MalebranchePerspectives on Science 11 (4): 443-483. 2003.Malebranche is both an occasionalist and an advocate of the preformationist theory of generation. One might expect this given that he is a mechanist: passive matter cannot be the source of its own motion and so requires God to move it (occasionalism); and such matter, moving according to a few simple laws of motion, could never fashion something as complex as a living being, and so organisms must be fashioned by God at Creation (preformationism). This expectation finds a challenge in Kant's depi…Read more
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1757Margaret Cavendish on the relation between God and worldPhilosophy Compass 4 (3): 421-438. 2009.It has often been noted that Margaret Cavendish discusses God in her writings on natural philosophy far more than one might think she ought to given her explicit claim that a study of God belongs to theology which is to be kept strictly separate from studies in natural philosophy. In this article, I examine one way in which God enters substantially into her natural philosophy, namely the role he plays in her particular version of teleology. I conclude that, while Cavendish has some resources wit…Read more
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54Critical Notice (review)Philosophical Inquiry 26 (4): 131-138. 2004.Critical notice of Jacqueline Broad's Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (CUP, 2002).
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1673Descartes on the Theory of Life and Methodology in the Life SciencesIn Peter Distelzweig, Evan Ragland & Benjamin Goldberg (eds.), Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy, Springer. pp. 141-72. 2016.As a practicing life scientist, Descartes must have a theory of what it means to be a living being. In this paper, I provide an account of what his theoretical conception of living bodies must be. I then show that this conception might well run afoul of his rejection of final causal explanations in natural philosophy. Nonetheless, I show how Descartes might have made use of such explanations as merely hypothetical, even though he explicitly blocks this move. I conclude by suggesting that there i…Read more
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40Review of Margaret Cavendish, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (7). 2002.
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527Eric Watkins, ed. The Divine Order, the Human Order, and the Order of Nature: Historical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 272. $74.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 5 (1): 187-190. 2015.
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2091Teleology and Natures in Descartes' Sixth MeditationIn Descartes' Meditations: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. pp. 153-176. 2012.In this paper, I consider Descartes’ Sixth Meditation dropsy passage on the difference between the human body considered in itself and the human composite of mind and body. I do so as a way of illuminating some features of Descartes’ broader thinking about teleology, including the role of teleological explanations in physiology. I use the writings on teleology of some ancient authors for the conceptual (but not historical) help they can provide in helping us to think about the Sixth Meditation p…Read more
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1225Cartesianism and its Feminist Promise and Limits: The Case of Mary AstellIn Stephen Gaukroger & Catherine Wilson (eds.), Descartes and Cartesianism: Essays in Honour of Desmond Clarke, Oxford University Press. 2017.In this paper, I consider Mary Astell's contributions to the history of feminism, noting her grounding in and departure from Cartesianism and its relation to women.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |