Science and its Development from B & L Rootenberg Rare Books
Science, natural history and more from B & L Rootenberg.
By Michael Stillman
B & L Rootenberg Rare Books has published their 12th catalogue, Fine Books. Science, Medicine, Natural History, and Early Printing. This is not a catalogue to find fiction, at least not intentional fiction. Time may have turned much of what people once believed from fact to fantasy, but these works represent man (and woman's) search for knowledge in a time when so much of what everyone knows today was still a mystery. These are the books that led us from darkness to light, the steps that made today's understanding of the world possible. These books are us.
Anyone who has ever watched a train whiz by is familiar with the Doppler effect. However, Doppler's discovery has been used for far more than simply telling when a train has passed you. The shift in the frequency of sound waves also applies to radio and light rays, enabling the effect to be used to determine the movement of stars, the rotation of the sun, and more recently such things as weather radar. Item 35 is a May 1842 publication containing Johan Doppler's paper explaining his discovery, Ueber das farbige licht der doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des himmels. Priced at $16,500.
Christian Huygens was one of the leading scientists of the 17th century. He studied the cosmos, developed the pendulum clock, enunciated the wave theory of light, and much more. Item 63 is a more speculative though fascinating work of Huygens, the 1698 first edition in English of The celestial worlds discover'd: or, conjectures concerning the inhabitants, plants and productions of the worlds in the planets. Huygens believed that in the Copernican world, where the earth was no longer believed to be the center of the universe, there was no reason to believe life on earth should be something special. Therefore, he reasoned, there must be similar life on the other planets. Of course we now realize this is not true - that drastically different climates mean there is no life remotely similar to our own on our solar system's other planets. However, we are now starting to discover planets circling other stars whose position in their solar systems could mean a similar climate, and so once again we are wondering whether Huygens' logic may yet hold. $16,000.
The most popular book enunciating a theory of evolution in the 19th century was not written by Charles Darwin. It was, instead, a book published in 1844, 15 years ahead of Darwin, titled Vestiges of the natural history of creation. It was published anonymously, as well might a book bound to generate controversy. Its author was the publisher, phrenologist and geologist Robert Chambers. Chambers had viewed the fossil history and concluded that God had not made the world's creatures exactly as they are today. He realized that species had come and gone, and changed along the way. Chambers did not come up with the right mechanism, natural selection, which is why his contribution has faded while Darwin remains influential (and controversial) to this day. He believed that God had created natural laws, and it was through those laws that species changed, rather than through some type of personal Divine intervention. As it turned out, Darwin had developed his own theory of evolution at the same time, but fearing controversy, decided to sit on it while building an airtight case, while Chambers was willing to write (anonymously) on his theories without first gathering all of the details. Item 27 is a copy of the first edition of Vestiges along with a first edition of Chambers 1845 follow-up Explanations: A sequel to "Vestigies of the natural history of creation," which answered some of the objections to his work. $6,500.
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Science and its Development from B & L Rootenberg Rare Books
Fashionable gauges and other ear decorations from John Bulwer.
Chambers and a few others may have concluded that species must somehow be evolving from one another, but it took Charles Darwin to explain exactly how, and provide the world with the evidence. The result is that his book is the one now recognized as one of the most important biological texts ever written. Item 32 is a copy of the first edition of On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, published in 1859. $95,000.
Of course there is the other side, and for those who believe in literal biblical creationism, there is no greater authority than Archbishop Ussher (though it must be noted that Ussher lived a couple of centuries before anyone had conceived of the theory of evolution). Ussher was the man who looked at biblical events and times to conclude the exact time of creation. The date was October 23, 4004 BC. Adam and Eve would have appeared just in time to celebrate - of all holidays - Halloween. Ussher derived his date by starting with the death of Nebuchadnezzar, which time was known, and working back through the Bible. Item 117 is Ussher's Annales veteris testamenti (1650) bound with Annales in quibus… (1654). $6,500.
For those who think mankind is at the top of the evolutionary chain, there is John Bulwer's Anthropometamorphosis: man transform'd… This is a book of all the hideous means of decorating and transforming the human body. Today, this stuff would again be in style. It covers tattooing, scarring, lip and ear piercing, and binding, along with displaying deformities, maladies, monstrosities and the like. This is the 1653 edition, which is the "best" compared to the 1650 as the first edition was not illustrated. It's the illustrations that make this book. Bulwer conducted anthropological studies of different peoples, but a look at these illustrations implies some of them lived only in his imagination. Item 19. $10,500.
B & L Rootenberg Rare Books may be reached at 818-788-7765 or blroot@rootenbergbooks.com. Their wesbite is www.rootenbergbooks.com.
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