Milestones of Science Books

BOYLE, Robert.

A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature; made in an essay, address'd to a friend.

London: John Taylor, 1685.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002486

1685-1686. 8vo (167 x 110 mm). [24], 412, [4] pp. Signatures: A8, a4 (-a4), B-Dd8 (-Dd8). Without the advertisement leaf found in some copies inserted after a4 and the final blank Dd8, publisher's catalogue on final leaf. Contemporary calf (spine rebacked, boards rubbed, endpapers renewed), spine decorated and titled in gilt. Internally somewhat evenly browned and spotted, worming in lower blank margin of final leaves, pencil annotations to p.253, small burn hole in O8, few leaves with paper flaws at fore-margin. Provenance: James Woodcock (ownership inscription dated 1818 on front flyleaf); The library of Hugh Selbourne (small ink stamp to title verso). Good, wide-margined copy. ----

Fulton 170; Sotheran 532; Wing B4014. - FIRST EDITION. Scarce essay by Robert Boyle, with no copies listed in the American Book Prices Current as having sold at auction since 1980. "After thirty years of experimentation and observation of natural phenomena Boyle appears in this thoughtful treatise to have reached his maturity as a philosopher; had he lived some fifteen years earlier he might, with Lucretius, have entitled his message 'On the Nature of Things'; but equally well he could with his contemporary, Isaac Newton, have called it his 'Principia'. The book deals with the laws of motion, less precisely, to be sure, than did the forty-four-year-old Newton the following year. He tells us that the current views of Nature were incompatible both with religion and philosophy, arguing that one must distinguish between 'universal nature' and 'particular nature', the former being the result of general cosmic principles such as the laws of motion ... and the latter the result of the general laws applied to a specific natural object. The growth of Boyle's theory of the universe as presented in 'Forms and Qualities', 'Cosmicall Qualities', and the present work forms an important phase in the history of natural philosophy that is little known" (Fulton, p.112-3).

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