Milestones of Science Books

KANT, Immanuel.

Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt.

Frankfurt, Leipzig: [publisher unknown], 1797.

2nd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002973

8vo (229 x 140 mm). [20], 130 pp. Contemporary cardboard, plain spine with gilt-lettered paper-label (boards rubbed and little soiled, extremities slightly worn, corners bumped and scuffed). Pages uncut. Text little browned, but otherwise clean and virtually unfoxed. Provenance: Illegible ownership inscription on title, bibliographic remarks in ink manuscript to first flyleaf. Very good copy in untouched binding. ----

D.S.B VII, p.231; Warda 6. - Scarce second edition of Kant's third work, first printed in 1755. An "Auszug", i.e only part of the Naturgeschichte, was printed in 1791, but no other editions or part of the work appeared between 1755 and 1797, though a third and fourth edition appeared in 1798 and 1808. All editions of this work are of great rarity.
In his youth Kant was a great admirerer of Newton, and in this work he bases his theories on him, but at the same time goes far beyond him. Kant describes how the solar system originated, and does this on the basis of his own mechanical principles. "In his "Theory of the heavens", Kant, by a series of bold strokes, anticipated astronomical facts that were later confirmed by very powerful observational techniques and with the help of relativistic cosmological theory. He conjectured that our solar system is a part of a vast system of stars making up a single galaxy, that the so-called nebolous-stars are galactic systems external to but similar to our own galaxy (a fact that was not confirmed until the twentieth century), and that there are many such galaxies making up the universe as a whole." (D.S.B.) - Visit our website for additional images and information.

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