ABSTRACT

In the foregoing study attention has been drawn to North's practice of testing his thoughts in writing so as to evaluate his responses to experience. This practice included a re-examination of what he had learned as a student at Cambridge when reading some of the works of Descartes, an experience that seems to have been transformative. For the mechanical philosophy of Descartes gave intellectual substance to North's 'entertainments' in applied mathematics; and as a consequence, he began to read the works of other mechanical philosophers, including Hobbes. Critics tend to forget that North had numerous writings in train all at once, as well as many personal and professional duties to an family and to some of his neighbours. Capitalisation, italicisation and paragraphing. All sentences begin with a capital letter regardless of North's practice. Capital letters mid-sentence, apart from proper nouns, are changed to lower-case.