BL Add MS 32545 consists of (in?) numerous versions and revisions of not quite identical, but intellectually convergent and frequently overlapping texts. There is one substantial continuous piece of writing (‘Reflections concerning Naturall things’, ff 90r-151v). The succession of essays entitled ‘phisicks’ is not undeveloped, but it does not represent development in the normal sense of the term. Nothing is substantially more ‘advanced’ in any one version over any of the other versions. The volume is rather a record of rehearsals. What is being rehearsed is the setting together of arguments. The versions and revisions represent much work over an extended period of time, the work they represent is a continuing rehearsal of an already determined set of natural philosophical principles.
The texts belong to and with each other. Although produced over time, they are all from the same period (between 1705 and 1712, there are also some very late pieces). We can date them in relation to each other not only by carried-over alterations, and renewed turns of phrase, but also from ‘historical’ evidences – for example from a reference to Newton’s knighthood, or to the second edition of his Optica. The impression of continuity is enhanced by the consistency of handwriting and paper used, as much as by the tireless reworking of the same themes. It feels like a continuous physical space.
The rehearsals trace Roger North’s preparation of his own Phisicks, or Physica, (see BL Add MS 42544) a comprehensive Natural History, a project intended to challenge and counter Newton’s Principia. (One does not have to think of a title for such a project, but provisionally I am calling it ‘Jacobite Science’.)
The first two folios, ff. 1r-2r, are an autobiographical note in Roger North’s hand. The recto of the first folio is no more than a title page: ‘Notes of my Father’. The author of Notes of Me ventriloquises his son’s reading. There is no apparent link between these two sheets and the rest of the papers as a set, it does not fit. How the volume came together, as with all of these volumes, is a mystery. The page numbering offers some evidence. At some point, possibly in hands of a bookseller hoping to construct a more marketable whole, the papers had been drawn together from a number of alphabetically marked packets. Even if they had originally belonged together, at some point they were sorted and separated and recombined … but with one strange outlier bound in. And then, in this form, in January 1886, they were considered as a set by two British Library scholars (see the unnumbered sheet at the end of the MS).
CONTENTS
f. 1r ‘Notes of my Father’
f. 2r Prfando/prface [A – I]
f. 7r phisicks. [1 – 16]
f. 15r phisicks. [1 – 12]
f. 21r phisicks. [1 – 16]
f. 26r phisicks. [1 – 10]
f. 31r phisicks.
f. 32r phisicks. Of Continuity. [9 – …]
f. 39r phisicks. Devisibility [1 – 6]
f. 42r phisicks. [c – ap]
f. 58r phisicks. of power or force.
f. 61r phisica. Motion. [cd – dt]
f. 80r Comentations.
f. 82r phisica.
f. 86r phisica. [60 – 72]
f. 90r ‘Reflections concerning Naturall things’ [a – dz]
f. 152r principles. [1 – 16]
f. 160r principles. [1 – 10]
f. 163r Hypotheses. [1 – 4; 73 – 94]
f. 176r Hypotheses & Experimts. [1 – 8]
f. 180r Experiments. [1 – 10]
f. 185r Continuity. [1 – 8]
f. 189r Continuity. [1 – 16]
f. 197r A demonstration
f. 198r Hypotheses. Continuity. [120 – 122]
f. 200r Hypotheses. Continuity. [83 – 84]
f. 201r Fluidity. [1]
f. 202r Complexitys. [1 – 16]
f. 210r plenitude. [1 – 8]
f. 214r plenitude. [1 – 2]
f. 215r ‘on fire and heat’
f. 216r Of plenitude. [1 – 6]
f. 220r Absolutes & Relatives. [1 – 24]
f. 232r Relatives. [1 – 16]
f. 240r Of phantasmes. [1 – 126]
f. 304r Resolves. [1 – 85]