Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes

Description

This edition includes several amendments to the previous text and adds a sixth dialogue. ENTRETIENS SUR LA PLURALITE DES MONDES by Fontenelle, his most famous and frequently reprinted and translated book, was first published in 1686. This highly important semi-utopian analysis of the universe is "the first example in French of a scholarly work made accessible to an educated but non-specialist public". - DSB, V, 59. A popular account of the systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe in dialogue form, the treatise "aroused general interest in astronomy and popularised the scientific system of inquiry; it also emphasised the small space occupied by man and this planet in relation to the rest of the universe." This 299-page book is complete with its folding cosmology plate, engraved in copperplate by the Spanish artist Juan Dolivar (1641-1692). EDITION. 1687, 2nd edition.