pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

107
KEPLER, Johannes (1571–1630)
Dissertatio cum nuncio sidereo nuper ad mortales misso.
Florence: Florentiae, Apud Io. Antonium Can[a]eum. Superiorum
permissu, 1610.
4to: A–E4 , V. [4], 13, [3], woodcut initials, typographic headpieces and
other decorations.
202 x 145mm. Extracted from a tract volume with the original foliation
scratched out and replaced by a manuscript foliation starting at f. 54,
now in turn partially erased; light paper discolouration but a fresh copy.
Binding: Recent boards.
Provenance: Contemporary or early marginalia posing a series of
questions.
Second edition (Wrst Prague 1610). Caspar 35.
Kepler received Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius, (Starry Messenger) describing
his telescopic discoveries, on 8 April 1610. Via the Tuscan ambassador in
Prague, Galileo requested a response to his book and Kepler quickly provided
a long letter of approval, published in the present work, the ‘Conversation
with the Starry Messenger’, Wrst published at Prague. ‘[I]n accepting the
new observations with enthusiasm, [Kepler] also reminded his readers of
the earlier history of the telescope, his own work on optics, his ideas on the
regular solids and on possible inhabitants of the moon, and his arguments
against an inWnite universe.’ (Owen Gingerich, DSB 7: 299a.)
The Sidereus nuncius was published at Venice in 1610, the Dissertatio cum
nuncio sidereo at Prague in the same year, quickly reprinted at Florence.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Galileo had himself returned to Florence in
this year to take up the post of mathematician and philosopher to the grand
duke of Tuscany, having resigned his chair at Padua.
108
KEPLER, Johannes (1571–1630)
Prodromus dissertationum cosmographicarum, continens
Mysterium Cosmographicum de admirabili proportione orbium
coelestium: deque causis coelorum numeri, magnitudinis, motuumque
periodicorum genuinis & propriis, demonstratum per quinque regularia
corpora goemetrica... Addita est erudita Narratio M. Georgii Ioachimi
Rhetici, de Libris Revolutionum... Item, eiusdem Ioannis Kepleri pro
suo opere Harmonices Mundi apologia adversus demonstrationem
analyticam Cl. V. D. Roberti de Fluctibus.
Frankfurt: recusus typis Erasmi Kempferi, sumptibus Godefridi Tampachii,
1621.
Folio: ):( 4 A–V 4 ; a–e 4 f 6 (–f6, blank), 109 of 110 leaves, pp. [8] 163
[1] (last page blank); 50. Woodcut initials, woodcut diagrams in the