[Rarebooks] fa: 1692 Athenian Mercury: GRAVITATION - THOMAS HOBBES - FIRE & BRIMSTONE

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other antiquarian science & mathematics, auction ending Sunday, September 29. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.



Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.




The Athenian Mercury. Vol. VI, Numb. 19[-21]. London: Printed for John Dunton, 1692. Three sheets, folio (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Light wear and small pinholes to the left margins; some browning, especially to the edges; light scattered spotting.

An unusual 3-sheet, 6-page issue of this popular late seventeenth-century English periodical, the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format. A querist, after verbosely extolling the Athenian Mercury ("one of the most laudable Projects our Age has invented", etc.) and congratulating the editors on their efforts, especially "your design to lay open the Vanity of the Silly, Witty Atheist, Mr. Hobbs," finally gets around to asking the question: "What is the Cause of that common Motion in Nature, call'd Gravitation, or the Descending of those Bodies call'd heavy?" After thanking the querist for his kind words, and getting in a few more digs at Hobbes ("it's true he's Dead, but his works yet speak, tho' not at all to his Praise…"), the editors provide a lengthy answer that touches on "the old Philosophers", Sir Kenelm Digby, sunbeams, "corporeal agents", the Biblical Creation, "Magnetical Quality", etc. Strangely, Isaac Newton is not mentioned, though his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica had been published five years before. Much of the rest of this issue is taken up with a reply to another reader's question: "Whether Men shall be tormented with Fire and Brimstone, or any Torment after this Life?"