Beyond Bounds: Infinity in Cavendish’s Ontology

Margaret Cavendish endorses the view that matter is actually infinite. This paper offers a systematic treatment of Cavendish’s views on infinity as developed in her later philosophical works (roughly, from Philosophical Letters onwards). The paper explains what it is for Cavendishian matter to be infinite and why the infinity of matter is, as Cavendish claims, a principle of her natural philosophy: on my reading, the infinity of matter is a partial ground for the multiplicity and finitude of material effects, as well as for the spatial and temporal boundlessness of the material world. The paper also establishes that being infinite is not a contingent feature of Cavendish’s matter, but a necessary one.