Vita immortalis viri Danielis Bernouilli…delineata et in sollemni Eruditorum Panegyri Recitata d. XVII, Mart. A. MDCCLXXXIII.
4to. 31 (1) pp. Disbound with spine covered with a thin strip of marbled paper. Fold to blank edge of cover, and a little even toning. Otherwise immaculate. [Offered with:] II. BERNOULLI, Daniel, Praeses; PREISWERK, Alexander. Q.D.B.V. Theses Tumultuariae, quas favente divino numine, ex decreto amplissimi senatus Academici, Cavante Logices et Metaphysices Cathedra ad D. XIII. Sept. MDCCLXXI. Basel, J.H. Decker, [1771]. Folio broadside printed on one side [50 x 39.5 cm] in two columns with decorative woodcut border. Some wear and minor discoloration at folds, outer edges a bit frayed, but otherwise very good. Very rare first edition of the first biography of Daniel Bernoulli (1700-82), the most celebrated of this illustrious clan and considered the natural successor to Newton and Leibniz on the Continent. The work was delivered as a memorial oration by his nephew before the faculty of the University of Basel. After briefly recounting the family’s history, it focuses on the young man’s precocity, claiming that he could and did give lectures at the age of 13! As the DSB notes, this early biography contains an “almost complete bibliography of printed works” by Bernoulli, which begins with his earliest work, the Exercitationes mathematicae (1724) and continues through his collaboration with Euler in St. Petersburg, his monumental Hydrodynamica of 1738, and several French works published in the 1750s. The works are cited in passing in the text and referred to more fully in the footnotes at the bottom of each page, giving publication details. The final leaf of text gives the inscription above Bernoulli’s grave. OCLC locates a single copy, Columbia. We have also located a copy in Basel. II. Extremely rare broadside thesis on logic for which Bernoulli sat as Praeses (examiner) at Basel during 1771. The work is unusual in our experience for containing material on the most sophisticated near-contemporary work in logic (e.g., that of Leibniz), which the student Preiswerk knows from published as well as unpublished work, the latter most likely from Bernoulli. Topics treated include the separation of Logic as a science from Metaphysics, the logic of contingencies, and the argument (stated as a proposition rather than fleshed out) that the Cogito of Descartes is a form of question begging. We locate a single copy in Basel.
Price: $3,850.00