4to (245 x 180 mm), pp [xxiv] 340 [2, errata and blank], with four leaves (foliated 342-345) each with an engraved magic square, engraved publisher’s vignette on title, small cancel slip on Gg3 recto; a fine, crisp copy in contemporary French speckled calf, slightly rubbed. £3350
First edition of Arnauld’s new geometry based upon the philosophical methodology of Pascal. ‘The Élémens (1667) undertakes a reworking and reordering of the Euclidean theorems in the light of the contemporary literature (in which he was widely read) and Pascal’s influence. It bases its claim to originality and influence on the new order in which the theorems, many of them adapted from contemporary sources, are arranged. As mathematics, it is characterized by the mastery of the contemporary literature and by its clear and fresh exposition; its virtues are pedagogical. It is interesting to compare Arnauld’s order of theorems with such recent ones as that of Hilbert and Forder, whose aims are quite different. If Arnauld’s pedagogical concerns are insufficiently appreciated, it may be because the role of what are properly pedagogical concerns in the habits and “methods” of modern science is insufficiently understood: its preoccupation with clarity and procedure, with formal exercises and notation, and the use of these as instruments of research’ (DSB).Arnauld (1612-1694) was a Jansenist and one of the foremost proponents of Pascal’s philosophy. He was a voluminous correspondent with Descartes and Leibniz; the latter wrote a review of the Élémens (see Die Leibniz-Handschriften zu Hannover, I, no 21, 287).
Provenance: the Earls of Macclesfield, Shirburn Castle, with engraved bookplate, shelfmark on front pastedown, and blindstamp Macclesfield crest on blank margins of first three leaves
OCLC: Yale, Library of Congress, Harvard, and Brown
GBP 3350.00
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