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Ele Willoughby, PhD
Ele Willoughby, PhD
@minouette@spore.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

Starting 2026 with some unknown birthdays: Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623 – 1673), 17th-century English aristocrat, philosopher, poet, scientist, writer, with her imaginary world from her strange sci-fi novel ‘The Blazing World’ which she appended to her treatise ‘Observations upon Experimental Philosophy’. An odd addition to my collection of scientists, 🧵

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/611949454

#printmaking #womenInSTEM #histsci #scifi #naturalPhilosophy #MargaretCavendish

My linocut portrait of Margaret Cavendish in gold holding a large globe of The Blazing World; it’s blue with icicles at the top and water at the bottom and several personages in between. The Empress, is a gold dress and crown is in the centre. To her right is a group of anthropomorphic animal scientists: a red northern cardinal-man, polar bear-man with white head, a pink worm-man, and a white goose-man. On her left are a green fish-man, and brown gorilla- and bear-man. Below is a hexagonal submarine with louse-man at porthole window.
My linocut portrait of Margaret Cavendish in gold holding a large globe of The Blazing World; it’s blue with icicles at the top and water at the bottom and several personages in between. The Empress, is a gold dress and crown is in the centre. To her right is a group of anthropomorphic animal scientists: a red northern cardinal-man, polar bear-man with white head, a pink worm-man, and a white goose-man. On her left are a green fish-man, and brown gorilla- and bear-man. Below is a hexagonal submarine with louse-man at porthole window.
My linocut portrait of Margaret Cavendish in gold holding a large globe of The Blazing World; it’s blue with icicles at the top and water at the bottom and several personages in between. The Empress, is a gold dress and crown is in the centre. To her right is a group of anthropomorphic animal scientists: a red northern cardinal-man, polar bear-man with white head, a pink worm-man, and a white goose-man. On her left are a green fish-man, and brown gorilla- and bear-man. Below is a hexagonal submarine with louse-man at porthole window.
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Ele Willoughby, PhD
Ele Willoughby, PhD
@minouette@spore.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

as a self-taught, die-hard royalist aristocrat &firm anti-empiricist but her publications on gender, power, manners, scientific method & philosophy cannot be ignored. She wrote 6 books on Natural Philosophy & was 1st woman admitted to a meeting of the Royal Society & thus a part of the contemporary world of science. Plus this delightfully eccentric woman combined her natural philosophy with sci-fi, & wrote herself into the story:

A young woman kidnapped by pirates escapes to the Blazing World 🧵

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Ele Willoughby, PhD
Ele Willoughby, PhD
@minouette@spore.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

via a portal at the N Pole. It is inhabited by animal-people obsessed with telescopes & microscopes, which lets Cavendish satirizes the Royal Society & Hooke (who had recently published Micrographia). She becomes Empress by marriage & frustrated, bans telescopes which only cause arguments but relents & orders them to keep them in their schools, rather than introduce any disturbances. She is likewise underwhelmed by their microscopic observations & considers these technological tools 🧵

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Ele Willoughby, PhD
Ele Willoughby, PhD
@minouette@spore.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

“false informers”. She seeks a scribe to write her own religious texts. She rejects famous philosophers Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato, Galileo or Hobbes, who would be too “self-conceited” to agree & develops a telepathic relationship mediated by spirits with none other than... Cavendish! The Duchess & Empress become platonic lovers & travel to each other’s worlds. 🧵

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Ele Willoughby, PhD
Ele Willoughby, PhD
@minouette@spore.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

Like later sci-fi the Blazing World includes imagined tech & science which appears far-sighted, like the air-powered engines, flying machines, subs (which could remotely measure ocean depth) or the concept of an infinite universe. But, it also contains common contemporary misconceptions like the idea that insects are spontaneously generated or that alchemy might work.

End 🧵

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Sylvia Wenmackers 🦉🍀
Sylvia Wenmackers 🦉🍀
@SylviaFysica@scholar.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

@minouette Nice! Helen De Cruz illustrated this story. (I miss them. 😔)

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Ele Willoughby, PhD
Ele Willoughby, PhD
@minouette@spore.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

@SylviaFysica thank you and yes, me too 😞 We discussed illustrating the Blazing World and her wonderful interpretation of it.

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