KEPLER, Johannes. Harmonices Mundi libri V, Linz: sumptibus Godofredi Tampachii, excudebat Ioannes Plancus, 1619, 2°, FIRST EDITION, probable first state of the title with device and without the text beginning "Accessit nunc ...," 5 engraved plates, woodcut illustrations, diagrams and musical notation (title dampstained, perforated and very frail with tattered margins, title and preliminaries noticeably creased at corners, accession stamp at foot of *2r, further stamp on 2C1r, S1 badly creased, some heavy browning); Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicum continens Mysterium Cosmographicum ... Item, eiusdem Ioannis Kepleri suo opere harmonices mundi apologia adversus demonstrationem, Frankfurt: typis Erasmi Kempferi, sumptibus Godefredi Tampachii, 1621-22, 2 parts, 2°, second edition of the Prodromus, large device on title to Part 2, 4 folding woodcut plates, one folding engraved plate (this cleanly torn and repaired with adhesive tape on recto and verso, plates and title to Part 2 stamped on verso), woodcut diagrams in text (some browning, later leaves creased at corners), 2 works in one volume, contemporary vellum (worn and crinkled). I: Brunet III, 652; Caspar 58; Dibner 6; Honeyman 1796; Horblit 58; Norman 1207; Sparrow 115; Zinner 4737] II: Bruent III, 653; Caspar 67, 68; Honeyman 1796; Sparrow 115; Zinner 4871, 4909] Provenance: JCL

Details

KEPLER, Johannes. Harmonices Mundi libri V, Linz: sumptibus Godofredi Tampachii, excudebat Ioannes Plancus, 1619, 2°, FIRST EDITION, probable first state of the title with device and without the text beginning "Accessit nunc ...," 5 engraved plates, woodcut illustrations, diagrams and musical notation (title dampstained, perforated and very frail with tattered margins, title and preliminaries noticeably creased at corners, accession stamp at foot of *2r, further stamp on 2C1r, S1 badly creased, some heavy browning); Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicum continens Mysterium Cosmographicum ... Item, eiusdem Ioannis Kepleri suo opere harmonices mundi apologia adversus demonstrationem, Frankfurt: typis Erasmi Kempferi, sumptibus Godefredi Tampachii, 1621-22, 2 parts, 2°, second edition of the Prodromus, large device on title to Part 2, 4 folding woodcut plates, one folding engraved plate (this cleanly torn and repaired with adhesive tape on recto and verso, plates and title to Part 2 stamped on verso), woodcut diagrams in text (some browning, later leaves creased at corners), 2 works in one volume, contemporary vellum (worn and crinkled). I: Brunet III, 652; Caspar 58; Dibner 6; Honeyman 1796; Horblit 58; Norman 1207; Sparrow 115; Zinner 4737] II: Bruent III, 653; Caspar 67, 68; Honeyman 1796; Sparrow 115; Zinner 4871, 4909] Provenance: JCL

Lot Essay

The Harmonices Mundi announced Kepler's third law of planetary motion, relating the magnitudes of the planetary orbits to their periods of revolution round the sun (the first two laws had been announced in Astronomia Nova, 1609). This major treatise on the harmony of the universe represents what Norman has termed "Kepler's attempt to discover God's archetypal model of the universe in the simple mathematical ratios embodied in the five regular polyhedrons, in the laws of musical harmony, in his own theory of astrological aspects, and in the planetary system he had proposed in Mysterium cosmographicum (1596)." It was a remarkable attempt to bring astronomy, geometry, music and astrology into a single unified system.

The Prodromus, first published in 1596, contains Kepler's key "recognition of the fact that there must be a regularity in the movements of the planets and their distances from the sun."

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