Hulme on the place of theory in explaining the world and on misogynist impulses in science...

From Speculations:  I wouldn't call this proto-feminist, but it is at least aware of misogynist impulses in science.  Fascinating.

Formerly, one liked theories because they reduced the world to a single principle. Now the same reason disgusts us.

[...]

Unity is made in the world by drawing squares over it. We are able to get along these at any rate [like a] railway line in desert.

The squares include cinders always cinders.

The same old fallacy persists the desire to introduce a unity in the world :

• (i) The mythologists made it a woman or an elephant :
• (ii) The scientists made fun of the mythologists, but themselves turned the world into the likeness of a mechanical toy.

They were more concerned with models than with woman (woman troubled them and hence their particular form of anthropomorphism).

One analogy is as good as another. The truth remains that the world is not any unity, but a house in the cinders.