Women, Philosophy and Science: Italy and Early Modern Europe

Part 1: Women philosophers and the classical inheritance.- Introduction.- Chapter 1. Moderata Fonte and Michel de Montaigne in the Renaissance debate on friendship and marriage (Annalisa Ceron).- Chapter 2. Plato and the Platonism of Anne Conway (Sarah Hutton).- Part 2: Women philosophers and the new philosophy of nature.- Chapter 3. Letters on natural philosophy and new science: Camilla Erculiani (Padua 1584) and Margherita Sarocchi (Rome 1612) (Sandra Plastina).- Chapter 4. Margaret Cavendish and Robert Boyle on the purpose, method and writing of natural philosophy (Emma Wilkins).- Chapter 5. Margaret Cavendish: science and women's power through The Blazing World (Carlotta Cossutta).- Chapter 6. A woman between Buffon and Sauvage: Mariangela Ardinghelli, the Italian translator of Hales' books (Corinna Guerra).- Chapter 7. Female science, experimentation, and 'common utility'. Teresa Ciceri, Candida Lena Perpenti, and Alessandro Volta's research (Alessandra Mita Ferraro).- Part 3: Men philosophers on the role of women.- Chapter 8. Amorous attraction and the role of women in the work of Giordano Bruno (Simonetta Bassi).- Chapter 9. Women from objects to subjects of science in Poulain de La Barre (Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin).- Chapter 10. From natural equality to sexual subordination in the theories of Hobbes and Rawls (S. A. Lloyd).- Index.