Beschreibung
First edition of "the most significant English astronomical work of its time" (ODNB). Wing's earliest works were Ptolemaic, but by 1651 he had accepted the fundamentals of Keplerian astronomy as modified by Ismael Boulliau. "Like many astronomers in the second half of the seventeenth century, Wing, following Boulliau and Seth Ward, opted for an empty-focus variant of Kepler's second law, holding that a planet moving in an elliptical orbit describes equal angles in equal times about the focus not occupied by the sun. In works published in 1651 and 1656 Wing, adopting Boulliau's method, had his elliptical orbits, including that of the moon, generated in purely geometrical fashion by circles and epicycles. In his posthumously published Astronomia Britannica, however, he discarded the epicycles in favour of a refined version of the theory proposed by Ward in the latter's Astronomia geometrica (1656), in which the elliptical orbits were assumed to be physically generated. Wing's celestial mechanics contained a mixture of Cartesian and Keplerian components, with a rotating sun and celestial vortex pushing the planets around in their orbits" (DSB XIV 446). Newton owned a copy of the present work, heavily perused and dog-eared according to Harrison (p. 300). "When in 1669 [Newton] read carefully through Vincent Wing's Astronomia Britannica (which among other innovations paraded a neat transfer of the modified Boulliau hypothesis to the ellipse's centre as a correcting factor on the central anomaly) he added to the endpapers of his library copy of the book a new equant law, centred again on the empty second focus of orbit but now preserving the true elliptical shape of the orbit itself only approximately" (D. T. Whiteside, in Before the Principia: The maturing of Newton's thoughts on dynamical astronomy, 1664-1684 I, p. 9). Wing (1619-68) "had little formal education and began earning his living at an early age as a surveyor, almanac compiler, astrologer and prolific writer of astronomical works. His almanacs were the most popular of their time; and, in Flamsteed's judgement, Wing produced our exactest ephemerides. He was an eager polemicist and frequently was involved in public disputes over astronomical and astrological matters" (DSB). The book is dedicated to Sir Robert Markham (1664-1690), who sat in the House of Commons from 1678 to 1685. Markham contributed an appendix to the book, 'De refractione'. ESTC R23367; Wing W2986. Folio (323 x 205mm), pp. [xx], 244, [2], 192, [2], 193-366, 367-369, including engraved frontispiece portrait of the author by Cross, woodcut diagrams, engraved illustration, each of the five books with separate title page (books I to III dated 1668, the others 1669). Contemporary panelled calf (heavily worn, faded gilt spine lacking both top compartment and lettering piece with the tail defective, joints cracked, lacking front free endpaper), internally crisp and clean with no stamps or other ownership marks. A very large copy. (We have classified this book as 'good', which could be misleading - internally the book is 'near fine' but the binding is only 'fair'). Five copies listed on RBH in the last 50 years - $3072 (2014), £2500 (2012), £2160 (2008), £4800 (2006), £4560 (2005). Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-1542997990409
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