Abstract

in the steadily growing body of secondary literature on Anne Conway, it has frequently been claimed that Conway anticipated, and maybe even influenced, Leibniz's theory of monads. This trend got going with a 1979 article by Carolyn Merchant, entitled "The Vitalism of Anne Conway: Its Impact on Leibniz's Concept of the Monad."1 It subsequently came to dominate the field; even now, many commentors still just take it for granted that Conway believed in monads. For example, this commitment is considered sufficiently central to her philosophy to earn a mention in the opening paragraph of the preface to Carol Wayne White's book on Conway, listed among just three things that are supposed to mark her out as...