NEWTON, Isaac. Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. Editio Ultima. 1723.

Amsterdam, Sumptibus Societatis, 1723.

Two parts bound in 4to (248x195 mm), (28)-484-(8) pages, 2 folding table and one double plate/ (12)-107-(1 bl.) pages.  binding : Contemporary full sheep, gilt arms on upper cover, spine gilt in six compartments, sprinkled edges. Binding rubbed. Minor worming after page 463, but a fresh copy. 

references: Gray [12], Wallis [12]. This edition not in Babson.
Cohen [in. Introduction to Newton Principia. Harvard University Press. 1971 : "The Principia is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed, Newton explained the underlying universal laws… [F]or the first time a single mathematical law could explain the motion of objects on earth as well as the phenomena of the heavens. It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought, equaled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of Species" (PMM 161). Three authorized editions of Newton's Principia mathematica were issued during his lifetime, but demand for the work was so great on the Continent that two unauthorized reprints were also published in Amsterdam in 1714 and 1723. "These Amsterdam reprints were a major undertaking, requiring the cutting of new wood-blocks for the figures and a new setting of type. The second reprint (1723) contains not only four tracts by Newton and W. Jones's 'Praefatio Editoris,' but also extracts from four letters of Newton's. These tracts are: De analysi per aequationes infinitas (first published by Jones in 1711), De quadratura curvarum and Enumeratio linearum tertii ordinis (published with the Opticks in 1704 and the Optice in 1706, but eliminated from the second English edition of the Opticks in 1717/18), and the Methodus differentialis. But this whole collection—the four tracts, the extracts from Newton's letters, and Jones's 'Praefatio'—was merely a reprint, without alteration, of a collection that was first published as a small book in London in 1711. It was reissued separately in Amsterdam in 1723 as well as being included as a supplement to the reprint of the Principia. How curious indeed that Newton's long-cherished plan of publishing De quadratura together with the Principia should have been realized only in this presumably unauthorized Amsterdam reprint of 1723!"].

provenance: Jean Pouyat (arms on first cover).

Sold