Nature’s Poetry and Humanity’s Artifice: Cavendish on the Role of the Imagination in Natural Philosophy
Perceived by many of her contemporaries as preferring theories spun from her own “fantastical” brain to the hard facts of science, Cavendish indeed accords a central role to the workings of the imagining mind. However, as I argue in this paper, Cavendish’s appeal to the imagination is by no means me...
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Français |
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2024
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | Perceived by many of her contemporaries as preferring theories spun from her own “fantastical” brain to the hard facts of science, Cavendish indeed accords a central role to the workings of the imagining mind. However, as I argue in this paper, Cavendish’s appeal to the imagination is by no means methodologically naïve. Through an exploration of Cavendish’s analogy between the poetic imagination and the productive, ordering activity of nature, I show how Cavendish poses her poetic depictions of nature both as a counterpoint to gendered critiques of the imagination – instead casting the imagination as a means for female thinkers to enter the male intellectual domain – as well as as a means for critiquing the conception of nature put forwarded by experimental philosophers inspired by the Baconian programme. |
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