Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy by Margaret Cavendish
A spirited critique of seventeenth-century experimental philosophy that challenges reliance on instruments and isolated trials, arguing that artificial manipulations often distort nature and that observation must be balanced with imaginative, speculative reasoning. It attacks the claims of mechanistic atomism and the exclusive authority of experimentalists, proposing instead a monistic, vitalist view in which matter has motion and sensibility and nature operates as an active, self-organizing whole. Mixing polemic, natural history, and literary flair, the work defends broader methods (and broader voices) in natural philosophy, urges humility about laboratory-crafted results, and calls for explanations grounded in natural causes rather than contrived, instrument-dependent demonstrations.
- Published
- 1666
- Nationality
- English
- Length
- Unknown
- Pages
- Unknown
- Original Language
- English
- Avg User Rating
-
(3.0)
- Alternate Titles
- None
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