Details
[DESCARTES, RENÉ]. Discours de la Méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la vérité dans les sciences. Plus La Dioptrique. Les Météores. Et La Géometrie. Qui sont des essais de cete Méthode. Leiden: Jan Maire 1637.
4to, 204 x 155 mm. (8 x 6 in.), late eighteenth or nineteenth-century parchment over pasteboard, later lettering-piece, edges blue-sprinkled, a few discreet modern repairs, upper outer joint splitting at bottom, paper flaws to corners of fols. 2X1 and 2 and 2Y2, scattered foxing or spotting, a few quires browned, gutters of quires 2F-2H slightly affected by damp.
FIRST EDITION, printer's woodcut device on title, divisional half-titles, numerous woodcut diagrams in text (one full-page cut repeated 7 times).
Dibner Heralds of Science 81; Grolier/Horblit 24; Norman 621; PMM 129; Tchemerzine II, 776.
"Descartes' contributions to the mathematical, physical and anatomical sciences were many, but his major contribution was his anonymous, first published work..." (Dibner). "Fontenelle, in the eloquent contrast made in his Éloge de Newton, described Descartes as the man who 'tried in one bold leap to put himself at the source of everything, to make himself master of the first principles by means of certain clear and fundamental ideas, so that he could then simply descend to the phenomena of nature as to necessary consequences of these principles'" (DSB). In the Discours de la Méthode, Descartes set out to fulfill the incomparably ambitious program that he had conceived nearly 20 years earlier, during a day of solitary meditation on the Danube while serving in the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. At that time, "he reached two radical conclusions: first, that if he were to discover true knowledge he must carry out the whole program himself...; second, that he must begin by methodically doubting everything taught in current philosophy and look for self-evident, certain principles from which to reconstruct all the sciences" (ibid.). The Discours is a lucid account of this process of rediscovery of the world, and contains the fundamental exposition of the principles of modern scientific method.
Provenance: Di Giovannandrea Spinola, eighteenth or nineteenth-century ownership inscription on front free endpaper -- Anonymous owner (sale, Sotheby's New York, 7 June 1988, lot 122).
4to, 204 x 155 mm. (8 x 6 in.), late eighteenth or nineteenth-century parchment over pasteboard, later lettering-piece, edges blue-sprinkled, a few discreet modern repairs, upper outer joint splitting at bottom, paper flaws to corners of fols. 2X1 and 2 and 2Y2, scattered foxing or spotting, a few quires browned, gutters of quires 2F-2H slightly affected by damp.
FIRST EDITION, printer's woodcut device on title, divisional half-titles, numerous woodcut diagrams in text (one full-page cut repeated 7 times).
Dibner Heralds of Science 81; Grolier/Horblit 24; Norman 621; PMM 129; Tchemerzine II, 776.
"Descartes' contributions to the mathematical, physical and anatomical sciences were many, but his major contribution was his anonymous, first published work..." (Dibner). "Fontenelle, in the eloquent contrast made in his Éloge de Newton, described Descartes as the man who 'tried in one bold leap to put himself at the source of everything, to make himself master of the first principles by means of certain clear and fundamental ideas, so that he could then simply descend to the phenomena of nature as to necessary consequences of these principles'" (DSB). In the Discours de la Méthode, Descartes set out to fulfill the incomparably ambitious program that he had conceived nearly 20 years earlier, during a day of solitary meditation on the Danube while serving in the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. At that time, "he reached two radical conclusions: first, that if he were to discover true knowledge he must carry out the whole program himself...; second, that he must begin by methodically doubting everything taught in current philosophy and look for self-evident, certain principles from which to reconstruct all the sciences" (ibid.). The Discours is a lucid account of this process of rediscovery of the world, and contains the fundamental exposition of the principles of modern scientific method.
Provenance: Di Giovannandrea Spinola, eighteenth or nineteenth-century ownership inscription on front free endpaper -- Anonymous owner (sale, Sotheby's New York, 7 June 1988, lot 122).