given, myth of the See SELLARS, WILFRID. Glanvill, Joseph (1636–80), English philosopher and Anglican minister who defended the Royal Society against Scholasticism. Glanvill believed that certainty was possible in mathematics and theology, but not in empirical knowledge. In his most important philosophical work, The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), he claimed that the human corruption that resulted from Adam’s fall precludes dogmatic knowledge of nature. Using traditional skeptical arguments as well as an analysis of causality that partially anticipated Hume, Glanvill argued that all empirical knowledge is the probabilistic variety acquired by piecemeal investigation. Despite his skepticism he argued for the existence of witches in Witches and Witchcraft (1668). J.W.A.