Details
DESCARTES, Ren (1596-1650). Le monde ... ou, le trait de la lumiere. -Discours ... touchant le mouvement et le repos. -Discours de la fivre. Paris: Theodore Girad [sic], 1664.
8o (164 x 102 mm). Numerous woodcut illustrations, including a few full-page and one folding. Contemporary French mottled calf, spine gilt. Provenance: Renati Morel (faint early signature on title-page); Lucien Dard (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION, with title a cancel and Girard's name mispelled in imprint. In this posthumously published treatise Descartes gives an account of cosmogony and cosmology as products simply of matter in motion, making the laws of motion the ultimate "laws of nature" and all scientific explanation ultimately mechanistic. "Descartes's first attempt to explain the formation of the physical world was composed during the 1630s but suppressed, like L'homme, after Galileo's condemnation" (Norman).
The privilege for this work was shared by Jacques le Gras with Michel Bobin, Nicolas le Gras and Theodore Girard. Several issues exist with various imprints and title cancels (see Guibert), the imprint in this copy agrees with Tchemerzine (a) which he calls "Edit. originale." Guibert, pp. 209-13; NLM/Krivatsy 3133; Tchemerzine II, p. 801 (a); Norman 629.
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FIRST EDITION, with title a cancel and Girard's name mispelled in imprint. In this posthumously published treatise Descartes gives an account of cosmogony and cosmology as products simply of matter in motion, making the laws of motion the ultimate "laws of nature" and all scientific explanation ultimately mechanistic. "Descartes's first attempt to explain the formation of the physical world was composed during the 1630s but suppressed, like L'homme, after Galileo's condemnation" (Norman).
The privilege for this work was shared by Jacques le Gras with Michel Bobin, Nicolas le Gras and Theodore Girard. Several issues exist with various imprints and title cancels (see Guibert), the imprint in this copy agrees with Tchemerzine (a) which he calls "Edit. originale." Guibert, pp. 209-13; NLM/Krivatsy 3133; Tchemerzine II, p. 801 (a); Norman 629.