Milestones of Science Books

LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm.

Protogaea sive de prima facie telluris et antiquissimae Historiae Vestigiis in ipsis naturae monumentis dissertatio ex schedis manuscriptis.

Göttingen: Johann Wilhelm Schmid, 1749.

1st Edition. Hardcover. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Very Good. Item #003820

4to (240 x 190 mm). [4], xxvi, [2], 86, [2] pp., title printed in red and black and with engraved armorial vignette, engraved headpiece, 2 woodcut initials and tailpiece, 12 folding engraved plates, final blank leaf L4. Contemporary German half-calf over prinkled boards, spine with 5 raised bands, original endpapers (outer joints partly split but cords folding firmly, head of spine chipped, light wear to extremities, corners scuffed and bumped). Internally quite crisp and clean throughout with just some light browning of text block of 5 pages, occasional minor dust-soiling at upper blank margin of 4 pages, rare light spotting in places, two plates creased at fold. Provenance: R. Cambier (bookplate to front pastedown and inscition on first flyleaf dated 1895), a further sheet with handwritten remarks in French about this book loosely inserted. Very good, wide-margined copy in untouched binding. ----

FIRST EDITION of this posthumous publication regarding the origin of the earth, originally written by the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1691-93 and edited by Christian Ludwig Scheidt, which led to further study on fossils and the evolutionary history of the earth. "Leibniz's 'Protogaea', along with Woodward's 'Essay toward a natural history of the earth', was the lineal descendent of Stensen's theories of sequential stratification and the organic origin of fossils" (Norman 1328). "Adopting a Cartesian explanation of the origin of the Earth as an incandescent globe, Leibniz postulated the consolidation of an original crust, the condensation of an initially universal ocean, and the subsequent deposition of a sequence of strata containing fossils, with the simultaneous diminution of the ocean by evaporation. The bulk of the essay was in fact devoted to the description and illustration of fossils, and to the demonstration of their organic origin, as a crucial part of his whole synthesis. The posthumous publication of 'Protogaea' in 1749 proved highly influential, for it provided a model of Earth-history that allowed for the organic origin of fossils, preserved Steno's and Woodward's understanding of strata as sequential deposits, and was conformable to both Scripture and reason. Its most important effect, however, was to make it possible for the different fossils embedded in successive strata to become evidence of the history of life itself, although that conclusion was not at first drawn in any detail" (Rudwick M.J.S., The Meaning of Fossils, Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. University of Chicago Press, 1976, p. 91).
References: Norman 1328; Nissen BBI 2428; Ward & Carozzi 1358; Wellcome III, 482; Ravier 440; Hoover 521; Bibl. Dt. Mus., Libri rari 167. - Visit our website to see more images!

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