Modus notandi: Sir Charles Cavendish’s notes on Thomas Hobbes and Walter Warner

What is it about?

This paper seeks to make a small contribution to the history of note-taking in the early modern period by examining the note-taking habits of Si Charles Cavendish (1591-1653) and its links to the so-called 'Cavendish circle'. The paper presents an analysis of the correspondence between Cavendish and the mathematician John Pell (1611-1685) which discusses the exchange of notes, and analyses Cavendish's notes on the circulation of the blood (including authors such as Walter Warner, Pierre Gassendi, Henricus Regius, and Johannes Wallaeys), and his notes on a draft of Thomas Hobbes' De corpore. One of the main conclusions' of the paper is that rather than being purely personal and private records, early modern notes were often designed to be shared with others, and thus were socially extensive.

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