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Networks of Knowledge
Catalogues are always an exercise in organizing knowledge. The act of cataloguing, as first practised, aspired to completeness. This ambitious drive led to the creation of some of the earliest items in this catalogue, and later the Scientific Revolution encouraged a new interest in systematizing knowledge. As more data amassed, humans sought new ways to remember, record, and represent it. This catalogue explores their attempts to do so, through encyclopaedias and infographics, demographics and computer genealogies, and many more subject areas.
![Lexicon graecum [Greek].](/image.pl?url=https%3a%2f%2fd3dzzbbvj9im7s.cloudfront.net%2fmedia%2fcatalog%2fproduct%2fcache%2feddd32ef720e909fecec8d69051e6d0d%2f1%2f4%2f141308.jpg&f=jpg&w=240)
SUIDAS. Lexicon graecum [Greek].Milan : 1499
Editio princeps of the archetypal Greek encyclopaedic dictionary, the largest Greek book to be printed in the 15th century; the sole extant source for many lost texts, the sole bearer of decisive variants for many other texts, and the most comprehensive witness to Byzantine culture and scholarship at the end of the first millennium....Learn More
ATHENAEUS of Naucratis. Deipnosophistae, in Greek.Venice : 1514
Editio princeps. The only extant work of Athenaeus of Naucratis, Sophists at Dinner has been described as an "encyclopaedia under the disguise of a dialogue" (Sandys, p. 330): containing countless anecdotes from ancient authors on food, wine, and dining customs, this is an invaluable source of information on ancient daily life.
The title...Learn More![Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae, concionatoribus, philosophis, medicis, juristis, oratoribus, procuratoribus, caeterisq[ue] bonarum litterarum amatoribus...](/image.pl?url=https%3a%2f%2fd3dzzbbvj9im7s.cloudfront.net%2fmedia%2fcatalog%2fproduct%2fcache%2feddd32ef720e909fecec8d69051e6d0d%2f1%2f5%2f154889.jpg&f=jpg&w=240)
ROSSELLI, Cosimo. Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae, concionatoribus, philosophis, medicis, juristis, oratoribus, procuratoribus, caeterisque bonarum litterarum amatoribus...Venice : 1579
First and only edition of a celebrated Renaissance treatise on the arts of memory and secret writing by the Dominican friar Cosimo Rosselli, counted by Frances Yates among the leading authorities of the mnemonic tradition. Published posthumously by his brother Damiano, the Thesaurus distils the scholastic-Dominican understanding of memory into a...Learn More
HAKLUYT, Richard. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land,London : 1599-1600
Second and greatly expanded edition, complete with the Wright-Molyneux two-sheet world map, which is found in very few copies. The map is the first world map produced in England and the first since Gerardus Mercator's original 1569 map to use the Mercator projection, which enabled navigators to plot courses as straight lines. The map was created...Learn More
DESCARTES, René. Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la vérité dans les sciences.Leiden : 1637
First edition of Descartes's magnum opus; an attractive copy from the library of distinguished 17th-century French bibliophile Louis Hesselin. Books from Hesselin's collection, which was celebrated by contemporaries for its particular focus on science, are extremely scarce in their distinctive armorial binding.
Louis Treslon-Cauchon...Learn More
GRAUNT, John. Natural and Political Observations,London : 1662
Second edition, first published earlier the same year, of a work which includes the publication of the first known life table to be based, in part, on real mortality data. "The scientific study of the numbers, characteristics and territorial distribution of populations - today called demography - began with Graunt" (PMM).
Graunt drew up his...Learn More
BOYLE, Robert. The Sceptical Chymist:Oxford : 1680
First edition thus, combining the second edition of The Sceptical Chymist (1661) and the first edition of Experiments and Notes, the latter with a separately dated title page, pagination, and register, which was also issued separately.
"The importance of Boyle's book must be sought in his combination of chemistry with physics. His...Learn More
BAYLE, Pierre. Dictionaire Historique et Critique.Rotterdam : 1697
First edition of Bayle's dictionary, a tremendous influence on the age of Enlightenment; "for over half a century, until the publication of the Encyclopédie, Bayle's Dictionnaire dominated enlightened thinking in every part of Europe" (PMM).
The French Protestant Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) wrote his Dictionnaire while in self-imposed exile...Learn More
LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm von. Explication de l'arithmétique binaire.Paris : 1705
First edition of this momentous volume of the journal of l'Académie Royale des Sciences, containing Leibniz's invention of binary arithmetic, the foundation of the electronic computer industry.
Binary notation reduces all numbers to expressions involving only 0 and 1. It was a topic that had interested Leibniz for over two decades. "This...Learn More
BAYLE, Pierre. An Historical and Critical Dictionary.London : 1710
First edition in English, following the first and second editions in French published in 1697 and 1702 respectively. "For over half a century, until the publication of the Encyclopédie, Bayle's Dictionnaire dominated enlightened thinking in every part of Europe" (PMM).
French Protestant Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) wrote his Dictionnaire while...Learn More
VICO, Giambattista. Principj di una scienza nuova intorno alla natura delle nazioni.Naples : 1725
Exceptionally rare first edition of Vico's New Science, an unusually fine copy, fresh and untrimmed in interim boards, and with manuscript corrections to the text made by Vico or on his instruction. A seminal historiographical work, the New Science was "the vehicle by which the concept of historical development at last entered the thought of...Learn More
JOHNSON, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language:London : 1755
First edition, in entirely unrestored contemporary condition. Finding a Johnson's Dictionary that has not even been rebacked has become something of an impossible quest in the last two decades; a superior copy, this set also has sheets 19D and 24O both in the first state, which Todd notes is highly uncommon.
The creation of the dictionary...Learn More
SMITH, Adam. "Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages." [In:] The Philological Miscellany;[London] : 1761
Rare first edition of The Philological Miscellany - all published - containing the first appearance in print of Adam Smith's essay "Considerations concerning the First Formation of Languages, and the Different Genius of Original and Compounded Languages" (pp. 440–79), drawn from his university lectures on rhetoric.
More than a linguistic...Learn More
MEIL, Johann Wilhelm. Spectaculum Naturae & Artium,Berlin : 1761 & 1765
First edition of both volumes of this rare polyglot pictorial encyclopaedia of trades, technology, crafts, and nature, with the text in four columns in German, Latin, French and Italian. The attractive illustrations cover beekeeping, printing, engraving, bricklaying and other trades, as well as scientific and military equipment. The work was aimed...Learn More
BURNETT, James, Lord Monboddo. Of the Origin and Progress of Language.Edinburgh : 1774-92
First editions of vol. II-VI, second edition of vol. I; the complete set - published over near two decades - of Burnett's vast study of language, the first major British contribution to the enlightenment debate on the subject.
The work is one of the major 18th century studies of language, challenging many of the prevailing philosophical...Learn More
LEMPRIÈRE, John. Bibliotheca Classica; or, a Classical Dictionary,Reading : 1788
First edition. "Lemprière's dictionary is a remarkable achievement for an undergrauate of twenty-three. It has remained popular because it is so readable; the factual information it contains is more accurately recorded elsewhere but his concise accounts (particularly those of mythological characters), with their elegant phrasing and ironic wit,...Learn More
PLAYFAIR, William. Tableaux d'arithmétique linéaire,Paris : 1789
First edition in French, combining Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas (1786) with his Essay on the National Debt (1787), both pioneering works in data visualisation and graphic display.
William Playfair (1759-1823) invented the series line graph, the bar chart, and the pie chart "without significant precursors" (ODNB). He published...Learn More
CONDORCET, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de. Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain.Paris : [1795]
First edition of the finest and most durable expression of the ultimate perfectibility of man, perhaps the clearest and boldest statement of the enlightenment belief in progress, demonstrating "man's progressive emancipation, first from the arbitrary domination of his physical environment and then from the historical bondage of his own making"...Learn More![An Hieroglyphic Poetical Epistle [from a Gentleman to a Lady];](/image.pl?url=https%3a%2f%2fd3dzzbbvj9im7s.cloudfront.net%2fmedia%2fcatalog%2fproduct%2fcache%2feddd32ef720e909fecec8d69051e6d0d%2f1%2f6%2f166306.jpg&f=jpg&w=240)
REBUS PUZZLE. An Hieroglyphic Poetical Epistle [from a Gentleman to a Lady];London : 1799
An attractive pairing of rhymed rebus letters, from a gentleman to a lady and her response.
Rebus puzzles, with symbols used to replace whole or parts of words, were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries and were often used in satirical engravings. The letter from the gentleman opens, "Dear Lady, When lucid eyes like stars unclouded shone...Learn More
PESTALOZZI, Heinrich. Wir Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt,Bern : 1801
First edition of Pestalozzi's treatise, an early and influential work on pedagogy and child development, as well as the book on which the author's fame rests, this an appealing copy in original condition.
An educational reformer influenced by Rousseau, in 1798 Pestalozzi established a school in Stans for orphans displaced during the French...Learn More
