Milestones of Science Books

BRAHE, Tycho.

Opera omnia, sive astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata in duas partes distributa.

Frankfurt: Johann Gottfried Schönwetter, 1648.

2nd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #001663

4to (221 x 178 mm). 470, [10] pp. (last leaf blank); 217, [5] pp., including 2 leaves of dedication by Schönwetter bound at the end. Separate title-page to second part, printer's woodcut devices to each title-page and page [218] of second part, numerous (9 full page) woodcut illustrations and diagrams in text. 19th-century half vellum over marbled boards (slightly soiled, extremities little rubbed), fore-edge of book block lettered in black ink. Light even browning of text, occasional spotting and light foxing as usual, general title with old ink stamp (partly erased and paper slightly thinned). Provenance: first flyleaf with illegible ownership entry dated 1655; title page with ownership signature dated 1656. A very good copy, collated complete. ---

Norman 321; Lalande 225; Houzeau-L. 2704; Waller 12004; Sotheran 6440. Starp, Schönwetter 195 (in AGB I); Brüning 987; Warner, Sky Explored, 41, 2 b.SECOND EDITION (first Pague 1611). "Despite its title, this work contains only Brahe's 'Protogymnasmata' (1602) and 'De mundi aetheri' (1588), the first two volumes of a never-completed trilogy. The first is a scholarly work on the 1572 supernova in Cassiopeia, containing Tycho's observations of the supernova, revisions of the theories of solar and lunar motion, and a catalogue of the positions of 777 fixed stars. The second work records Tycho's observations of the great comet of 1577, and includes a description of his geoheliocentric theory of the universe. Tycho's observations of the supernova and comet led him to abandon the Ptolemaic concept of heavenly spheres and to deny the Aristotelian hypothesis that nothing new could be born in the heavens." (Norman).

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