Arithmetica Universalis.
“Arithmetica Universalis” by Newton.
Precious and rare second edition of Newton's great work on differential calculus, the last revised by the author.
Copy preserved in its contemporary English binding.
From the Earls of Macclesfield's "South Library" at Shirburn Castle.
Octavo, (1) f., 332 pp.
Marbled calf, double gilt fillet framing the covers, spine with raised bands adorned with double fillet and gilt floral tools, decorated edges, blue edges. English binding of the period.
201 x 122 mm.
Newton, Isaac. Arithmetica Universalis: or, a Book on the Composition and Resolution of Arithmetic.
London, Benj. & Sam Tooke, 1722.
Copy preserved in its contemporary English binding.
Provenance: Earls of Macclesfield's "South Library" at Shirburn Castle, shelfmark 180.C.30, with bookplate and library stamps.
Precious and rare second edition of Newton's “Universal Arithmetic”, his “most widely read and published mathematical work” (Whiteside).
This is the last edition revised by the author.
Rare second edition of Newton’s “Universal arithmetic”, his "most often read and republished mathematical work" (Whiteside).
It’s the last edition to be revised by Newton.
Babson, 200; Wallis, 278.
Revised by Newton himself, who already by September 1720 was "fort advance", this second edition of his Lucasian lectures incoporates up-to-the-minute revisions. The cancelled leaf U6, which in this copy has almost the air of being a page proof, is a vivid testimony to this (cf. Mathematical Papers V, p.469 note 686). The section by Halley which had been included in the 1707 edition edited by Whiston (see lot 1517) is here omitted.
The running-titles throughout the 1707 edition which had so vexed Newton were simply Algebrae and Elementa on facing versos and rectos. In this edition the running-titles change according to the text up to p.75 and thereafter the versos have Resolutio Quaestionum and the rectos Arithmeticarum (to p.97), Resolutio Quaestionum Geometricarum (p.99-239), Aequationum Natura (pp.240-241), Aequationum and Natura on facing versos and rectos (pp.242-249), Aequationum Natura on p.250, and thereafter they change again in accordance with the text. The book is therefore much easier to find one's way around. In addition there is a greater use of italic in this edition.
“The importance of Newton's work did not reside solely in having created a usable and logically satisfactory basis for mechanics as such (…) His fundamental principles were so satisfactory from a logical point of view that experimental facts had to give the impulse towards a new expansion” (Albert Einstein).
