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Article ID: CBB001421033

Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society (2014)

Wilkins, Emma (Author)

Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Volume: 68, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 245-260

DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2014.0015

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Science and gender Experiments and experimentation Microscopes Natural philosophy 17th century Great Britain Hooke, Robert Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle Royal Society of London

It is often claimed that Margaret Cavendish was an anti-experimentalist who was deeply hostile to the activities of the early Royal Society---particularly in relation to Robert Hooke's experiments with microscopes. Some scholars have argued that her views were odd or even childish, while others have claimed that they were shaped by her gender-based status as a scientific `outsider'. In this paper I examine Cavendish's views in contemporary context, arguing that her relationship with the Royal Society was more nuanced than previous accounts have suggested. This contextualized approach reveals two points: first, that Cavendish's views were not isolated or odd when compared with those of her contemporaries, and second, that the early Royal Society was less intellectually homogeneous than is sometimes thought. I also show that, although hostile to some aspects of experimentalism, Cavendish nevertheless shared many of the Royal Society's ambitions for natural philosophy, especially in relation to its usefulness and the importance of plain language as a means to disseminate new ideas.

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