An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth - photo 1
An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth - photo 2

An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth

Lot 90
28.01.2025 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 15 120
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1360806
Lot 90 | An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 5 000
HOOKE, Robert (1635-1703). An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth. London: T.R. for John Martyn, for the Royal Society, 1674.

First edition of Hooke’s defence of Copernicus. In the first of his Culterian Lectures, a series designed to promote public knowledge of contemporary science, Hooke provides observational evidence to support Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the universe. He begins by encouraging listeners to broaden their minds and not fall among those who “have had no true notion of the vastness of the Universe” and who “suppose the Sun as big as a Sieve, and the Moon as a Chedder Cheese” (p. 2). With this work, Hooke “was the first to recognize that orbital motion did not depend on centrifugal force but rather on the principle of rectilinear inertia. It was this discovery that set Newton on the correct path to understanding orbital dynamics” (Norman). Keynes Hooke 16; Wing H-2613; Wellcome III, p.296; Norman 1093.

Quarto (197 × 140mm). Folding plate, woodcut headpieces and initials (plate repaired along upper fold and worn at edges, shaved with slight loss to "An" on title-page as well as headlines/page numbers and occasional catchwords; brittle with several mostly marginal repairs, old stabholes, lower inner corners excised, creasing along lower edge of leaves). Modern double gilt-ruled crushed red morocco, ornamental gilt panelling, top- and foredge red. Provenance: obscured library stamp above colophon – "14" (note on title page) – occasional annotations – cancelled library accession card dated 17 September 1926 – Owen Gingerich (bookplate).
Place of origin:England
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