Women in the History of Philosophy

Confucianism is commonly understood as a universal philosophy. When Confucius transvaluated ren (仁) from manliness into the inner virtue that makes a person humane or benevolent and elevated it as the moral virtue par excellence that encompasses the key attributes of all other virtues, he clearly presented Confucian self-cultivation as an ethical program that is available to all human beings. Despite their contrasting accounts of human nature, Mencius and Xunzi, the two most important classical Confucian masters after the demise of Confucius, further articulated the Confucian ethic of moral self-cultivation under the guiding assumption that anyone who has successfully undergone the arduous process of moral development can become a sage, the paragon of immaculate moral character. Mencius in particular advanced the idea, which must have been perceived as quite radical by his contemporaries, that all human beings are originally good in the sense that they are born with the “sprouts” (duan 端) of cardinal moral virtues – such as ren, yi (義, righteousness), li* (禮, ritual propriety), and zhi (智, wisdom or, more accurately, the ability to tell right from wrong) – which incline one to become good. Most tellingly, Mencius called human nature “Heaven-decreed,” where Heaven (tian 天) was understood by the ancient Chinese as the divine repository of goodness, thereby making it possible that anyone dedicated to the Way could carry out the moral mission to make society better and government humane. Therefore, as far as pre-Qin classical Confucianism is concerned, it would not be far-fetched to say that Confucianism aspires to the universal ethics of moral self-cultivation. What is surprising is that there is little information about how this otherwise universal philosophy was understood, evaluated, or practiced by women, not only during the time of Confucius and his disciples but also after Confucianism became the state ideology and the dominant intellectual tradition throughout the subsequent imperial periods. As H. G. Creel aptly calls him, Confucius might have been one of the first “private teachers” in China who accepted anyone as his student as long as the prospect showed him due respect and was eager to learn, regardless of his social and economic

immortal.Section 5 argues that Welby's metaphysic of Motion is ultimately idealist.Focusing on 1890-1 texts, Section 6 argues Welby held a panpsychism akin to that of W. K. Clifford and C. Lloyd Morgan.Yet, on my reading, Welby's position is complicated by her willingness to acknowledge genuine novelty within nature.I argue her resulting struggle runs parallel to that found in the mature emergentism of Lloyd Morgan and Samuel Alexander, and the layered picture of reality she arrives at is especially similar to that of Alexander.Section 7 considers Welby's views on time across her career, arguing that from her earliest, 1881 writings on the topic she posits a block universe; and that from around 1897 she arrives at a complementary, new position, that time is derivative on space.Welby publishes this metaphysic in her 1907 Mind article 'Time as Derivative'.Section 8 investigates Welby's identification, from around 1897, of Motion with space.I argue that Welby's Motion-Space can profitably be understood using Clifford's identification of matter with the curvature of space.Section 9 concludes by summarising my understanding of Welby's metaphysical system, and speculating on the relationship between Motion and God.Welby's metaphysics, and the shadowy scientific-philosophical debates underlying them, reward exploration.

Sketching Welby's Life and Works
Lady Victoria Alexandrina Maria Louisa Welby, née Stuart-Wortely, was born into the British aristocracy: her godmothers were Princess Victoria (later, Queen Victoria) and the Duchess of Kent (the Queen mother).Following early years of travel abroad, and two years spent at the court of Queen Victoria, Welby married Sir William Welby-Gregory and retired to Denton Manor, Grantham (Lincolnshire).After the death of her husband in 1898, Welby moved to Duneaves, Harrow (London).6Her wide-ranging interests included philosophy, language, theology, science, technology, education, and literature.Evidence of this breadth can be found in the newspaper clippings she collected, and often annotated.To give just a few examples, these clippings include articles on 'Motor-Car Engineering'; 'Medicine To-Day'; 'Automatic [Telephone] Exchange'; 'Woman Suffrage and Its Advocates'; 'Quackery and Dental Clinics';a n d'The Sources of Energy',o n radium and coal. 7rom the 1860s until her death, Welby maintained an extensive intellectual network, corresponding with over 450 figures.These figures include major philosophers and scientists of the period, such as Henri Bergson, F. H. Bradley, Shadworth Hodgson, T. H. Huxley, William James, Christine Ladd-Franklin, Vernon Lee, Charles Sanders Peirce, Bertrand Russell, F. C. S. Schiller, G. F. Stout, and Mrs Humphry Ward.From 1886 she became close friends with Lucy Clifford, novelist and widow of philosopher W. K. Clifford (who died in 1879).In her memoriam of Welby, Lucy Clifford (1924, 106) wrote, 'She knew everyone who counted in the world.'W e l b yu se dh e rn e t w o rkt o develop ideas and to bring people together, putting her correspondents in contact with each other, and hosting events. 8S h ee v e no f f e r e dt h e'Welby Prize' for the best essay on 'significs', her label for theories of meaning, which was published by the journal Mind in 1896.In a 1901 parody edition of the journal, Mind!, her friend Schiller immortalised the event with characteristic slapstick style: LADY WELBY, whose interest in clearing up intellectual fogs and purifying the philosophical atmosphere is well known, has offered a prize of £1,000 to any philosopher who can produce adequate documentary evidence to show that he: (1) Knows what he means.
A fraction of Welby's correspondence has been published; I recount the major efforts here. 9Welby's daughter, Mrs Henry Cust, published two volumes of letters spanning 1879-1911;see Cust (1929see Cust ( , 1931)).These volumes are extremely valuable but they have drawbacks: Cust silently edited some of the prose, and does not include precise dates for each letter. 10  Mathematics. 11 Eschbach (1983, xvi) claims this shows that Peirce held Welby in high esteem -'far higher esteem than many Peirce scholars, who make only occasional mention of Lady Welby and then frequently in footnotes as the correspondence partner of the great semiotics expert'.Happily, following a fallow period in the mid-twentieth century, interest in Welby picked up from the 1970s.This was partly due to the Hardwick (1977)  Likely because What Is Meaning? and the Peirce-Welby correspondence focus on language, Welby is frequently characterised as primarily (even exclusively) focused on language.For example, Schmitz (1985, xii) records that 1920s scholars describe Welby as an early investigator of meaning.Hardwick (1977, xix) writes, 'From 1885 until her death in 1912, Lady Welby's interests were almost completely centred on problems of language and meaning.' Peijnenburg and Verhaegh (forthcoming) describe Welby as a philosopher 'of language'.Yet historians of philosophy are slowly becoming interested in other aspects of Welby's work.For example, Misak (2016, 82-5), Metzer (2020), and Hurley (2022) study Welby's relationship with pragmatism; Pearson (forthcoming) explores Welby's views on analytic philosophy and education; and Stone (forthcoming) examines Welby'sv i e w so n meaning and naturalism.Against prevailing characterisations of Welby as being uninterested in metaphysics, I have argued that Welby offers a metaphysical idealism, and an anti-realist metaphysic of time; see Thomas (forthcoming a, forthcoming b).
With the exception of her articles on time, I find that whilst Welby's publications hint at deep metaphysical views, they offer no detail.Yet, through archival research, I have found that hundreds of her unpublished letters and manuscripts concern metaphysics.I draw extensively on these materials to construct my reading of Welby's system.There is evidence that Welby wanted to publish her views.One of Welby's (repr. in Petrilli, 2009, 36-7) plans for future books include chapters on 'motion and the dynamic, instead of Matter and the static';the'self';and'Time as distinctly derived from Space as Room + motion, Change and succession'.Sadly, these plans did not come to pass, and her metaphysics largely remains in the archives.This Element aims to reconstruct the system she might have advanced.Venturing deep into the wilds of Welby's thought, it seeks to dispel any lingering doubts as to her interest in metaphysics.Future scholars may dispute my reading of Welby's metaphysical system but not, I hope, that she has one.
3 Material Bodies as Motions

Introducing Welby's Puzzling Claims on Matter and Motion
Lucy Clifford (1924, 101-2) sheds light on the chronology of Welby's intellectual development when she recalls a trip they took to Switzerland in 1886: 'it was soon evident that she was in a transition stage, dreaming and evolving theories of her own, reaching out towards the thinkershumbly seeking knowledge from them and encouragement to pursue her own tracks of thought'.I find it highly plausible that 1886 was a 'transition stage' for Welby, for her metaphysical claims emerge forcibly from that year onwards.
From around that period, Welby repeatedly states that 'Motion', or the 'dynamic', is prior to matter.Here are some examples.The following passage is taken from an 1886-8 letter to theologian W. H. Simcox: We know now what we never knew before, that, beyond all we see as 'fixed' or 'stationary', there is Motionin every molecule as in every solar-system.(Welby, repr. in Cust, 1929, 202) This is from an 1889-90 letter to another theologian, Edmund McClure: I have had certain ideas all or nearly all my life which I am now finding day by day to be in unexpected general correspondence with the present lines of scientific advance ...
[Including] Replacement of the static by the dynamic.Everywhere for a lump of stuff called 'substance', read a complex of energy.The 'stuff' is always secondary and provisional; the motion is always primary and permanent.(Welby, repr. in Cust, 1929, 265-6) In What Is Meaning?, Welby (1983Welby ( [1903]], 174) reiterates that 'Motion' and the 'dynamic' are primary, whilst 'Matter' and the 'static' are secondary.
Welby's 1907 'Time as Derivative' claims that, once we have improved our conception of Motion: the term 'matter' will be reduced to its proper function of indicating content and resistance.Whatever resists, whatever is contained, is the outcome of that ultimate dynamic order which in the last resort is the source of the static or at least its governing pre-supposition.(Welby, 1907, 398)  we postulate matter at rest and then conceive Motion as coming to shove it on ... But we have to reverse this if we take the view here suggested.It is Motion which 'constructs' Matter. 12inally, consider this passage from a letter to William James, dated 24 May 1908: Having lost or failed to gain the sense of the supremacy of motion over its product matter, and of the solidity attained by intensely rapid, minute, confined motion (of some 'third' element, apparently 'ether'?), we make a ruling fetish of stuff, although in English we couple it with nonsense.(Welby, repr. in Petrilli, 2009, 59) In the absence of further explanation, these statements are puzzling, even obscure.I argue we can best understand them by looking to Welby's engagement with the physics of her period.

Welby's Engagement with Vortex Theories of Matter
A major milestone of Victorian physics was the development of 'field theories'.On these theories, phenomena such as electromagnetism are derived from a more fundamental mediuma field.From the 1860s, William Thomson (later, Lord Kelvin) developed a new kind of field theory: the 'vortex' theory of matter.Earlier thinkers had suggested that electromagnetic waves, including light, travelled through an undetectable, space-filling field or substance known as 'ether'. Building on this, Thomson (1867, 15-17) argued we should stop conceiving material atoms as 'strong and infinitely rigid pieces of matter'.Instead, we should conceive them as 'vortex atoms', akin to moving vortices within liquid.Thomson compares vortex atoms with the rings of smoke produced by cigars or cigarettes.He records recently witnessing a 'magnificent display of smoke-rings', wherein the rings bounced off each other, 'shaking violently from the effects of the shock', yet elastically maintaining their shape.Vortex atoms are, however, more complex than smoke-rings: although Thomson conceives them roughly as rings, a closed loop with two ends meeting, these atoms can be 'knotted or knitted' in many different ways.He argues that the variety of vortices, and their interplay, could potentially explain all material phenomena. 13omen in the History of Philosophy Thomson's vortex theory of matter had a huge impact on late-nineteenthcentury British science.In her pioneering study of its history, Doran (1975, 197) explains that this 'program for a field theory of matter ...was widely subscribed to in Britain by 1880'.Physicist Oliver Lodge (1883b, 329-30) described Thomson's theory as 'highly beautiful', 'the simplest conception of the material universe which has yet occurred', a theory which almost 'deserves to be true'.Lodge (who would later defend his own vortex theory) usefully summarises how it was understood in the early 1880s: We must begin to imagine a continuous connecting medium between the particlesa substance in which they are imbedded, and which extends ... without break to the remotest limits of space ... Gravitation is explainable by differences of pressure in the medium ... Light consists of undulation or waves in the medium; while electricity is turning out quite possibly to be an aspect of a part of the very medium itself.
The medium is now accepted as a necessity by all modern physicists ... The name you choose to give to the medium is a matter of very small importance, but 'the Ether' is as good a name for it as another.(Lodge, 1883a, 305) Of especial interest to us is how physicists understood Thomson's theory of matter: whirling portions [of ether] constitute what we call matter; their motion gives them rigidity, and of them our bodies and all other material bodies with which we are acquainted are built up.One continuous substance filling all space ...which in whirls constitutes matter ...This is the modern view of the ether and its functions.(Lodge, 1883b, 330) Just as motions in water create whirlpools, motions in another medium create material bodies.As Lodge's description exemplifies, some vortex theorists explicitly conceive matter as motions of ether.However, others simply conceive matter as motions; implying either that there is no underlying medium, or else leaving the nature of the underlying medium open.Some of these latter, motionfocused accounts drew on Thomson's (1884, 204) statement: 'it is scarcely possible to help anticipating ... the arrival at a complete theory of matter, in which all its properties will be seen to be merely attributes of motion'.This section will now set out three texts defending vortex theories of matter. 14he first is G. Johnstone Stoney's 1885 paper, 'How Thought Presents Itself in Nature'.Stoney was an Irish physicist, best known for his work on light, gases, the solar system, and for advancing towards the discovery of the 'electron'-a term he coined. 15In the introduction to this paper, Stoney (1885, 178-9) explains that science has shown the universe to exhibit greater 'simplicity' than previously realised.The simplicities he identifies all concern motion.For example, 'Sound is Motion', such as vibrating piano strings; and 'Light is Motion', for we see objects via motions in the molecules affecting our retinas.Stoney (1885, 186-7) states that force, mass, and energy are merely 'functions of the motions'.Our bodies comprise motions, including the vibrations of nerve fibres, and 'intricate' movements within the brain.He claims there need not be any 'mysterious entity' called 'substance': we need not accept that 'underlying every motion must be some thing to be moved'.He summarises these findings as follows: we are confronted with the fact revealed to us by science, that every phenomenon of the outer world which we can perceive by any of our senses, is simply a mass of motions ... scientific inquiry finds motion pervading the material universe; motion everywhere, motions underlying every phenomenon, and it finds nothing existing outside the mind excepting motions.(Stoney, 1885, 189, 191) For Stoney, science shows that the material universe is really 'a mass of motions'.
The second is George Romanes' 1885 paper, 'Mind and Motion'.Romanes was a Canadian-Scots evolutionary biologist, best known for his work on the nervous system, natural selection, and mental evolution. 16The paper declares: [It is] a matter of carefully demonstrated fact, that all our knowledge of the external world is nothing more than a knowledge of motion.For all the forms of energy have now been proved to be but modes of motion; and even matter, if not in its ultimate constitution vortical motion, at all events is known to us only as changes of motion....We do not even know what it is that moves; we only know that when some modes of motion pass into other modes, we perceive what we understand by matter.(Romanes, 1885, 75-6) For Romanes, matter is only known to us as 'changes of motion'.
The third text is Karl Pearson's 1892 The Grammar of Science.Pearson was an English mathematician and philosopher, best known for 'almost singlehandedly' establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. 17As its title indicates, The Grammar of Science is partly concerned with scientific language: Pearson (1892, viii) aims to address the 'obscurity' enveloping scientific principles.However, it also makes many claims about matter.Some of these claims 15 See Owen and O'Hara (2004). 16See Smith (2004). 17See Woiak (2004). 8 Women in the History of Philosophy Cambridge University Press & Assessment 978-1-009-34586-6 -Victoria Welby Emily Thomas Excerpt More Information volume; and partly toEschbach's (1983)edition of What Is Meaning?, which included a lengthy editorial introduction.Two years later, Schmitz (1985) edited a collection on her work, Essays on Significs: papers presented on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Victoria Lady Welby, 1837-1912.Today, partly spurred by Petrilli's ongoing scholarship, interest in Welby's work on language continues.Not least, Nuessel et al. (2013) edited a special issue of the journal Semiotica on Welby's significs.