Beschreibung:

KEPLER, Johannes (1671-1630). Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicarum, continens Mysterium Cosmographicum de admirabili proportione orbium coelestium . [ And :] – Pro suo opere Harmonices Mundi Apologia . Frankfurt: Erasmus Kempfer for Godefrid Tampach, 1621-1622.
KEPLER, Johannes (1671-1630). Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicarum, continens Mysterium Cosmographicum de admirabili proportione orbium coelestium . [ And :] – Pro suo opere Harmonices Mundi Apologia . Frankfurt: Erasmus Kempfer for Godefrid Tampach, 1621-1622. 2 parts in one volume, 2° (303 x 195mm). Five folding woodcut plates, woodcut diagrams. (Without final blank, spotting, some browning, occasional marginal dampstain, tear in one plate near fold, small wormhole in the bottom margin.) 20th-century black half morocco. The second edition; the first with Kepler’s defence against Fludd. When first published in 1596 Mysterium Cosmographicum ‘was the first unabashedly Copernican treatise since De Revolutionibus itself... Kepler argued that the sun’s centrality was essential, for the sun itself must provide the driving force to keep the planets in motion... although the principal idea of the Mysterium Cosmographicum was erroneous, Kepler established himself as the first, and until Descartes the only, scientist to demand physical explanations for celestial phenomena. Seldom in history has so wrong a book been so seminal in directing the future course of science’ (DSB). Fludd and Kepler were at odds over this new, quantitative approach to nature, rather than Fludd’s symbolical and alchemical tradition. Houzeau and Lancaster 2841.