CONDILLAC, Etienne Bonnot, Abbé de La Langue des Calculs... Paris, Charles Houel, [1798]
8vo (195 x 120 mm), pp [iv] 484 [2]; a few gatherings slightly browned, a very good copy in contemporary tree calf, a little worn. £950
The true first edition of Condillac's posthumously published masterpiece. It was through this work 'that Condillac exercised the most decisive influence on the philosophical taste of the generation of scientists immediately following him. Therein, like his predecessors in the rationalist tradition, he looked to mathematics as the exemplar of knowledge. He parted company with them, however, in developing the preference he had expressed in his early work for the analytic over the synthetic mode of reasoning... Algebraic terms consist of a set of exact symbols. By convention they always mean the same thing. They are combined and manipulated according to rules of a perfectly exact syntax. Algebra, indeed, is at once a language and a method of analysis. By contrast, ordinary language is an inaccurate and clumsy instrument all rusted and corrupted by centuries of sophistry and supersititon. To compare it with algebra would reveal the difference between science and the imperfections of life in society' (DSB).
This work appeared as the final volume of the Oeuvres philosophiques, and also issued on its own as above. The separate issue does not have the volume number on the half title, and the errata page relates only to this work, whereas in the collected issue it is part of the errata for all the volumes.
£950
This item is listed on Bibliopoly by W. P. Watson Antiquarian Books; click here for further details.