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الوصف
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Dating based on HPT. GW dates about 1475 and Polain about 1484., Gothic letter, capital spaces; various annotations on recto of first blank leaf, but a fine crisp copy, unwashed in nineteenth-century leather-backed boards. Adelard of Bath's most important original work, the Natural Questions, (written before 1137) is a dialogue with an unnamed nephew, comprising "seventy-six chapters covering such manifold subjects as the nature and growth of plants (with attention to the doctrine of the four elements and four qualities); the nature of animal (including the question of whether animals have souls, which is answered in the affirmative); the nature of man (including his psychology and physiology); and meteorology, physics, and astrology" (DSB). One of the foremost of mediaeval English natural philosophers, Adelard was "a pivotal figure in the conversion of Greek and Arabic learning into Latin" (ibid). "The Questions Naturales is a completely new phenomenon in the literature of the west in its advocacy of the experimental method, its adherence to experience against the claim of authority, and its defence of the 'moderns'. The treatise concerns itself with common problems of natural science but deliberately excludes theological speculation. In this it follows the best traditions of Islamic scholarship. Adelard's proclaimed purpose is to expound 'what he has learnt from Arab teachers under the guidance of reason'" (Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England, Yale University Press, 1977). VERY RARE. This is the second of only two fifteenth-century editions. The first - from the same press as this - is datable to c. 1475 (Goff A49). Goff gives the same date to the present edition (Goff A5o), but ISTC-in-progress re-dates it to ca. 1484-87. Charles Burnett. Adelard of Bath, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts XIV; DSB, 1, 6-64. H 85; Campbell, Annales de la typographie Neerlandais au XV siecle, 5; Polain (B) 12 [1484]; BMC IX 152; GW 219; Goff A 50; Klebs 8.1., Checklist: "JPM 629.", Bennett collection. NNPM |
