Lot 56
Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de
Discours sur les différentes figures des astres
The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician
Auction: 23 October 2025 from 13:00 GMT
Description
d'ou l'on tire des conjectures sur les étoiles qui paroissent changer de grandeur; et sur l'anneau de Saturne. Avec une exposition abrégée des systemes de M. Descartes et de M. Newton. Paris: de l'Imprimerie royale, 1732. 8vo (19.1 x 11.8cm), contemporary French calf with gilt floral devices to spine-compartments, marbled endpapers, [4] 83 pp., woodcut device to title-page, woodcut headpiece and initial, diagrams in text [Wallis 122]
Footnote
First edition, presentation copy to James Stirling, inscribed ‘pour Monsieur Jac. Stirling de la Societé Royale, par son tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur Maupertuis’ on the initial blank. An important association copy of the author's first book, ‘the first Newtonian treatise ever published in France’ (Storni, ‘Knowledge in Motion: The Circulation of Maupertuis’s Discours sur les différentes figures des astres […]', Philosophical Reviews in German Territories (1668-1799), 2025, Vol. I, p. 59) In 1728 Maupertuis spent three months in London, making the acquaintance of the circle of Newtonians there including Stirling, Henry Pemberton and Abraham de Moivre, with the latter orchestrating his admission to the Royal Society. He was not necessarily in sympathy with every aspect of mathematical investigation then being pursued in Britain, greeting Stirling's Methodus Differentialis (1730) with the weary remark that ‘this business of series [is] the most disagreeable thing in mathematics’ (Bellhouse, Abraham de Moivre, 2011, p. 35).