WOLFF (Christian): — Cosmologia Generalis Methodo Scientifica Pertractata, qua ad solidam, inprimis Dei atque Maturae Cognitionem via Sternitur..... Editio Novissima Emendatior

Veronae Typis Dionysii Ramanzini Biblliopole Apud S. Thjomam. 1736. Folio, 302 x 214 mms., pp. [xiv], 283 [284 blank], with engraved image of the arena in Verona on title-page, uncut, contemporary vellum; small corner cut from lower right of title-page, not affecting text. A very good copy. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) was one of the most gifted mathematicians and philosophers of his day, and this is probably his most famous and important book, first published in 1731. Gerd Buchdal in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography says of him, \"Wolff was essentially a popularizer and (to some extent inspired by Leibniz) sought to effect a formal synthesis between Scholasticism, the new mathematical methods, and more recent scientific conceptions.Wolff's deterministic formulations of his cosmological principles. emphasize the rational connections between things, given as sequences or coexistence.The visible world is a machine, operating in accordance with the laws of motion: almost one-third of the Cosmologia generalis treats these laws.\" My own introduction to Wolff was in a graduate seminar on Kant (don't ask when), with a reference in the Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant referred to Wolff as the greatest of dogmatic philosophers, which was not an inducement to read him.