Boyle, Robert
Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours
£945
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 19 June 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
First occasionally written, among some other Essays, to a Friend; and now suffer'd to come abroad as The Beginnig of an Experimental History of Colours. London: for Henry Herringman, 1664. 8vo (16.6 x 10.5cm), [40] 424 pp., 18th-century tan calf, title-page printed in red and black, engraved folding plate, binding worn, book-block detached from binding, initial quire a detached from book-block, upper 3 cords (of 4) split between K1 and K2, small repair to plate, front pastedown (containing traces of old ink annotations) abraded, lacking front free endpaper [Fulton 57]
Footnote
Rare first edition of one of Boyle's most influential works, which propounded a number of ideas and observations subsequently explored by Newton in his Optics, was a principal source for Locke's distinction between ‘primary’ and 'secondary' qualities, and moved Samuel Pepys to declarations of uncomprehending awe. In recording that certain vegetable extracts change colour according to the acidity of a solution, Boyle furthermore provided the first full account of chemical indicators; there are also descriptions of the iridescence of metallic films and soap bubbles, and snow-blindness. Printed in 1664, it is conceivable that a large number of copies perished in the Great Fire of London two years later, a fate widely believed to have befallen Shakespeare's Third Folio, a work of the same year.