Glanvill's first work (a passage in which suggested the theme of Matthew Arnold's Scholar Gipsy), The Vanity of Dogmatizing, or Confidence in Opinions, manifested in a Discourse of the shortness and uncertainty of our Knowledge, and its Causes, with Reflexions on Peripateticism, and an Apology for Philosophy (1661), is interesting as showing one special direction in which the new method of the Cartesian philosophy might be developed.
This agrees with one feature in ordinary literary usage - the contrast between " dogmatizing " and suspending judgment, or taking refuge in conjecture.
The scepticism of Joseph Glanvill, which is set forth in his two works The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661) and Scepsis scientifica (1665), has more interest for Englishmen.
Averroes maintains that a return must be made to the words and teaching of the prophet; that science must not expend itself in dogmatizing on the metaphysical consequences of fragments of doctrine for popular acceptance, but must proceed to reflect upon and examine the existing things of the world.
