60 BAUMAN RARE BOOKS Rare First Edition Of Kant’s First Published Book, 1749 Rare first edition of Kant’s first book, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, with two folding plates, bound together with a first edition of his later treatise Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. “Even though Kant is widely considered to be one of the two or three greatest philosophers that Western civilization has produced, he was also much interested in science and especially in the philosophy of science... He has sometimes been accused… of being an armchair scientist. He might more accurately be called an armchair philosopher speculating on the fundamental bases of science. He was not interested in gleaning facts and data; rather, he speculated concerning the grand scheme in which the facts gleaned by others are arrayed… In his Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1747) he... tried to explain the nature of space by means of the forces of unextended substances (monads) that cause such substances to interact. He attempted to account for the threefold dimensionality of space by appealing to the laws that govern such interactions” (DSB). Text in German, printed in black letter. Warda, 1, 23. Only Possible Argument only with dampstaining to lower outer corner, just touching text in on a few leaves; interior otherwise quite clean. Attractive binding with light wear. 80KANT, Immanuel. Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte. BOUND WITH: Der einzig mögliche Beweissgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes. Königsberg, 1747 [1749], 1763. Octavo, contemporary parchment-covered boards. $28,500
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