Anne Conway is one of the interesting yet overlooked figures in the history of Western philosophy. She demonstrates that women were active participants in philosophical debates as early as the seventeenth century and offers an original philosophical theory that stands in direct opposition to some of the most influential theories in her own period. Conway's work offers a distinctive approach to the philosophical debates of the seventeenth century by attempting to fuse the rigorous methodology of the mechanistic sciences with the spiritualistic metaphysics of vitalism. Conway stands as an important figure both as a woman philosopher and as an innovator with new solutions to the problems inherent in the philosophical debates of her time.

Anne Finch was the second daughter of Elizabeth Bennet Finch and Heneage Finch, recorder of London, speaker of the House of Commons, and friend and defender of Francis Bacon. Both of her parents settled...