{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02383053839364519, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.3, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Philosophical and Physical Opinions

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Philosophical and Physical Opinions. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: whether or not there are inherent capability differences between men and women; gender; atomism; whether or not goodness and badness are objective qualities in the natural world; empty space and the impossibility of vacuum; the struggle for creatures to maintain their structural integrity; striving; individuation; creation; annihilation; chance; causation; teleology; knowledge; motion; perception; mental illness and the brain; and physicians and disease. The chapter begins with a note that Cavendish writes “To the Two Universities” in which she says that the main reason for differences in the skills and capacities of women and men is that men have put into place structures that make it impossible for women to develop and flourish. She also looks ahead to a future time when different structures will be in place and the self-same work that she has produced in the seventeenth century will have an opportunity to secure a foothold.