Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus Tomus primus [-tertius] [...] Nunc primum in lucem prodit

Three volumes, folio (361x225 mm). Tomus primus complectens Euclidis libros octo, arithmeticam, Theodosij sphaerica, trigonometriam, geometriam practicam, mechanicam, staticam, geographiam vniuersalem, tractatum de magnete, architecturam ciuilem, & artem tignariam: [40], 763, [1 blank] pp. Collation: †-††⁴ ā⁴ ē⁴ ō⁴ A-BBBbb⁴ CCCcc⁶; Tomus secundus complectens tractatum de sectione lapidum, architecturam militarem, hydrostaticam, tractatum de fontibus, & fluviis, tractatum de machinis hydraulicis, navigationem, opticam, perspectivam, catoptricam, et dioptricam: [28], 731, [1 blank] pp. Collation: ā⁴ ē⁴ ō⁴ ū² A-XXxx⁴ YYyy⁶; Tomus tertius complectens musicam, pyrotechniam, astrolabia, gnomonicam, astronomicam, kalendarium, astrologiam, algebram, indivisibilium methodum, aliasque; [36], 863, [1 blank] pp. Collation: ā⁴ ē⁴ ō⁶ ū⁴ A-QQQqq⁴. Title pages printed in red and black with the large printer's device in the center. With several woodcut diagrams in the text. Uniformly bound in contemporary or slightly later calf, spine with six raised bands, title and volume number lettered in gilt in two compartments, the remaining four compartments decorated with the gilt anagram of Christ, panels framed by a double gilt fillet, red edges (worn, rubbed, joints partly opened and cracked, top and bottom of the spine and panels' corners damaged). Ex-libris A. Nachet Paris on the front pastedowns. Large pale waterstain to the outer margin at the beginning of volume two, otherwise a very good, clean copy.

First edition (reprinted in four volumes in 1690).

Claude-François Milliet De Chales (or Dechales) was born in Chambéry in 1621. Not much is known of his personal life. “For some time he was a Jesuit missionary in Turkey. He was well liked in Paris, where for four years he read public mathematics lectures at the Collège de Cler-mont. After teaching at Lyons and Chambéry, he moved to Marseilles, where he taught the arts of navigation and military engineering and the practical applications of mathematics to science. From Marseilles he went to Turin, where he was appointed professor of mathematics at the university. He died there at the age of fifty-seven in 1678. Although not a first-rate mathematician, Dechales was rather skillful in exposition; Hutton has observed that ‘his talent rather lay in explaining those sciences [mathematics and mechanics] with ease and accuracy … that he made the best use of the production of other men, and that he drew the several parts of the mathematical sciences together with great judgment and perspicuity'. Dechales is best remembered for his Cursus seu mundus mathematicus, a complete course of mathematics, including many related subjects that in his day were held to belong to the exact sciences. The first volume opens with a description of mathematical books arranged chronologically that, as De Morgan remarks, is well done and indicates that Dechales had actually read them. This is followed by his edition of Euclid's Elements (bks. I-VI, XI, and XII). Arithmetic computation, algebra, spherical trigonometry, and conic sections are of course included. Of the algebraic material, Hutton observes that it is ‘of a very old-fashioned sort, considering the time when it was written'. The algebra of Dechales is imbued with the spirit of Diophantus; as Moritz Cantor points out, Dechales rarely mentions the work of Mydorge, Desargues, Pascal, Fermat, Descartes, or Wallis. Among other subjects included in the Cursus are practical geometry, mechanics, statics, geography, magnetism, civil architecture, military architecture, optics, catoptrics, perspective, dioptrics, hydrostatics, hydraulic machinery, navigation, pyrotechnics, gnomonics, astronomy, astrology, meteoritics, the calendar, and music, as well as a section entitled ‘A Refutation of the Cartesian Hypothesis'. Indeed, in his history of mathematics, Cantor gives a detailed description of the Cursus both because it was a popular and widely used textbook and because it reflected the totality of mathematical knowledge as possessed by dilettantes or amateur mathematicians of the time who were fairly competent interpreters or expounders of the subject. Thus, while according Dechales due credit for his efforts, Cantor is nevertheless critical of much of the mathematical content of his work, deploring Dechales's failure to make full use of such available contemporary source materials as the firsthand works of mathematicians, their correspondence, and so on” (W. Schaaf, Dechales, ClaudeFrançois Milliet, in: “Dictionary of Scientific Biography”, New York, 1971, III, pp. 621-622).

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\UBOE\004138.

[14005]