NOLLET Jean-Antoine, abbé Leçons de physique expérimentale.

DSB, X, 147-148.

Complete set, illustrated with an engraved frntispiece and 116 egraved plates. Abbé Nollet’s public lectures (1700-1770) helped popularize and disseminate physics discoveries in the mid-18th century. 

“With carefully orchestrated demonstrations performed on 350 different instruments, the abbé entertained his enthusiastic auditors as, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he undertook to dispel their ‘vulgar errors, extravagant fears and faith in the marvelous’. These were not mere shows, as one sees from their expanded syllabus, the famous Leçons de physique… The presentations are lively, comprehensive, and up-to-date, with full directions for realizing the effects under study and excellent illustrations of apparatus” (DSB).

This famous work, originally published in 1743, was very successful and was reprinted many times. The illustrations, both precise and suggestive, show the operations and numerous instruments described in the text. The frontispiece, depicting Abbé Nollet performing an experiment in the presence of a distinguished audience, is one of the first iconographic documents to establish science as an object of culture and mundaine social life. As is often the case, the six volumes, uniformly bound at the time, come from different editions: the sixth for volumes I to III, the third for volume IV, the second for volumes V and VI.

A very good copy, well preseved in its contemporary binding.