Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #120940
Cost: $2,600.00

Elements

Euclid

"NO WORK CAN COMPARE TO EUCLID'S ELEMENTS IN SCIENTIFIC IMPORTANCE": 1705 ENGLISH EDITION TRANSLATED BY BARROWS, WHOSE INFLUENCE ON NEWTON IS OF "CONSIDERABLE HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE"

EUCLID. Euclide's Elements; The whole Fifteen Books Compendiously Demonstrated. To Which is added Archimedes Theorems Of the Sphere and Cylinder… Never before in English. London: Printed by E. Redmayne, 1705. Small octavo, contemporary full brown paneled calf, raised bands. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $2600.

Second edition of Barrow’s translation of Euclid's Elements—"few if any of the surviving books from Newton's library are more thumb-worn or more thoroughly annotated than the Euclidis Elementorum… authored by none other than Isaac Barrow"—also containing Barrow's translation of Archimedes' Theorems of the Sphere and Cylinder, very scarce in contemporary calf.

"No work can compare to Euclid's Elements in scientific importance" (Rosenbach 19:225). Authored by Euclid in the 4th century B.C., "this is the basic treatise in geometry. 'No work presumably except the Bible has had such a reign" (Horblit 27). "Euclid's Elements is a compilation of all earlier Greek mathematical knowledge since Pythagoras, organized into a consistent system so that each theorem follows logically from its predecessor; and in this simplicity lies the secret of its success. Of the 13 books into which it is divided, numbers 1 to 4 are on plane geometry; 5 and 6 on the theory of proportion due to Eudoxus and its application; 7 to 9 on the properties of numbers; 10 on irrational quantities; 11 to 13 on solid geometry culminating in the proof that there are only five regular solids; books 14 and 15 were added later but are not by Euclid… The Elements remained the common school textbook of geometry for hundreds of years" (PMM 25, citing the 1482 first edition published in Venice by Erhard Ratdolt). This is the second edition of Barrow's translation of Euclid, and the first edition of his translation of Archimides' Theorems. In 1660 "the first English edition of Barrow's Euclid (published in Latin in 1655) appeared in London" (Heath, 110). "An eminent mathematician and classical scholar," translator Isaac Barrow "was considered by his contemporaries as second only to Newton" (DNB). His influence on Newton, if not fully known, is held to be of "considerable historical importance" (DSB). "Few if any of the surviving books from Newton's library are more thumb-worn or more thoroughly annotated than the Euclidis Elementorum… authored by none other than Isaac Barrow" (Christianson, 65). With numerous in-text geometrical illustrations; one rear advertisement page. Lowndes, 756. See Grässe, 514; Horblit 342; Norman 729; Wing E3397. Preliminary blank leaf with tiny early notation.

Text fresh with light scattered foxing, slight edge-wear, rubbing to contemporary calf. A highly desirable very good copy.

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