LAPLACE Pierre Simon Exposition du système du Monde.

Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 123; Houzeau & Lancaster, 8940.

First edition.

This work contains for the first time Laplace’s theory on a “nébuleuse primitive”.

“In addition to Laplace, the professors of exact science were Lagrange, Monge, Haüy, and Berthollet. Together with colleagues expounding natural history, geography, and political economy, they lectured in the auditorium of the Jardin des plantes before audiences of more than 1,200 pupils… The program announces for [Laplace’s] course had committed him to treat also of the differential and integral calculus, mechanics, and astronomy. Time did not permit, and he would simply refer his auditors to a book that he had in preparation, to be entitled Description du système du monde, in which he would give a nonmathematical account of all that had been discovered in these subjects. Whatever the comprehension of his lecture on the overcrowded benches of a noisy auditorium, the promised book proved to be one of the most successful popularizations of science ever composed” (DSB., Suppl.).

Good copy.