7. Margaret Cavendish Helped Pave the Way for the Scientific Revolution
Margaret Cavendish was born into British aristocracy in 1623. She spent much time in France due to political problems within the English royal family. Cavendish was famous for her work in philosophy, ethics, and science. As a philosopher and ethicist, she was staunchly in favor of promoting women’s rights and was even one of the first opponents of animal testing. Margaret Cavendish was outspoken about the fact that women, though possessing the same intelligence as men, were disregarded in areas such as scientific learning. As such, she helped begin to break down barriers that enabled the women’s rights movement to start.
As a scientist, Margaret Cavendish rejected many of the ideas of Aristotle in favor of so-called “natural philosophies,” particularly the mechanistic notion that all things are essentially the sum of their parts. Her thoughts, including a vitalistic embrace of fields such as atomic theory and human anatomy, helped pave the way for the scientific revolution. She wrote several books on both philosophy and natural sciences and even wrote a science fiction novel. She was the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society of London, a regular gathering of scientists and philosophers, and there engaged with such brilliant minds as Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Robert Boyle.