Judith Drake’s Dissemination of Empiricism and Rationalism

The present article examines Judith Drake’s important contribution to the dissemination of scientific discourses in England in the long eighteenth century. Celebrated as one of the most influential protofeminist thinkers, she deserves no less attention for her engagement with new sciences. Medical practitioner, wife of a Fellow of the Royal Society (the eminent anatomist James Drake) and mother of a physician, Drake forcefully endorsed and propagated the principles and methods of experimental sciences in her polemical pamphlet An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696) and in her contribution to her husband’s anatomical tract Anthropologia Nova; or a new system of Anatomy (1707). A passionate advocate of the moderns in the ancient versus modern learning quarrel, she was a very vocal champion of rationalist and empirical approaches to knowledge and learning. Fully endorsing John Locke’s rationalism and sensationalism, Drake campaigned for the reform of education: the pedagogical model she proposed for girls and boys alike is based on logical reasoning and direct observation of nature.