“English Them in the Easiest Manner You Can”: Margaret Cavendish on the Discourse and Practice of Natural Philosophy

Abstract

Margaret Cavendish took an active part in the Royal Society's discussions about plain style. Her contributions to the Royal Society's plain style discussions were closely connected to her scientific practices, both of which explicitly and implicitly challenged the practices of the Royal Society. In her own rhetorical practices, Cavendish modeled herself as a reader and writer of scientific texts, and her challenges to the discursive and experimental practice of seventeenth-century science make her a compelling figure in the rhetoric of science.

Notes

¹I thank Rhetoric Review reviewers James Zappen and Nola Heidlebaugh for their constructive and insightful comments, which greatly improved this article.

²Cavendish's organicism, or vitalism—her belief that all matter has some vital component—is a crucial aspect of her science, and has generated much discussion, particularly because it bears a close resemblance to some late twentieth-century feminist and ecofeminist critiques of science. She is certainly critiquing mechanical science, but perhaps not its gender bias, as Lisa Sarasohn and Sophia Blaydes suggest. There is little evidence that she perceived the kind of gender assumptions inherent in mechanistic science that Evelyn Fox Keller analyzes (Reflections). Eve Keller suggests that Cavendish's works show “an unusual awareness of the constitutive role of gender relations in science,” although notes that is not enough to label her a feminist (“Producing” 452). However, I see no sign that Cavendish makes a clear connection between her gendered dismissal of Royal Society scientists as, for instance, playful boys and her organicism.