The frontispiece shows a city rising: masons on scaffolds, blocks and beams scattered in the foreground, a banner overhead reading "His condimus urbes" — with these we build cities. It is a fitting motto for the whole Wolffian project, of which this pocket-sized book is one of the most appealing productions: the conviction that understanding nature's strangest performances, brick by rational brick, builds the world men live in. And the performances gathered here are strange indeed. The tour opens soberly, with why the same object weighs differently at different places on the earth. Within pages we are at a wonderful well in Poland whose waters catch fire, discovered, the author tells us, only by an extraordinary accident after long years of ignorance. There follow a board that wept more resin than the whole board weighed, reported to Fontenelle at the Paris Academy; an earthquake at Villa Nova in Portugal in 1722; the sun itself hanging in a clear sky over Ulm on Pentecost evening 1721, its body plainly visible for hours "without brightness or rays," like a moon at noon. And in the book's most unforgettable chapter comes the case, solemnly relayed from the Breslau medical annals, of a young dog vomited up alive out of a man's stomach, head like a cat's, preserved afterward in spirits for the Tsar's own collection. Each marvel is patiently walked back from portent to physics. The first chapter opens beneath a woodcut of the radiant triangle crowned, the name of God blazing over the wonders.
The author's story is one of the poignant episodes of the German Enlightenment. Ludwig Philipp Thümmig came to Halle at twenty and became the most devoted and most gifted of Christian Wolff's disciples. When the Pietists engineered Wolff's famous expulsion in 1723 — the king giving Germany's greatest philosopher forty-eight hours to leave Prussia or hang — Thümmig shared his master's fall and followed him out. Wolff's recommendation placed him at the Collegium Carolinum in Kassel. There he wrote the systematic Latin digest of Wolff's philosophy that carried it across Europe, and there he died in 1728, thirty years old. The title page of this posthumous new edition calls him "weiland," the late, Professor at the Carolinum. The preface is by Wolff himself, billed in red ink as Herr Regierungs-Rath Wolffens. The book was printed at Marburg, Wolff's city of exile, by his own publisher there, Philipp Casimir Müller, in 1735.
This copy is complete, in its contemporary dark calf with an orange-red morocco label lettered "Thümmigs Naturs-Begebenheiten." The binding is heavily worn. The spine-head is chipped away, and the rear cover has lost much of its leather surface in old, stable erosion. The text within is sound and fresh by comparison. As a reading experience it is exactly what an Enlightenment book of wonders should be: small enough for a coat pocket, dense with burning springs and darkened suns.
THÜMMIG, Ludwig Philipp (1697-1728). Versuch einer gründlichen Erläuterung der merckwürdigsten Begebenheiten in der Natur, wodurch man zur innersten Erkänntnis derselben geführet wird. "Neue Auflage... nebst einer Vorrede Herrn Regierungs-Rath Wolffens" [preface by Christian Wolff]. Marburg: bey Philipp Casimir Müller, 1735. Second (first Marburg) edition; first published Halle 1723.
Physical Description: Duodecimo, 312 pp. plus register ([14] leaves), Inhalt ([2] leaves), and terminal blank, title printed in red and black. Engraved frontispiece ("His condimus urbes," a city under construction); woodcut headpiece with the Tetragrammaton in a crowned radiant triangle at the opening of the first essay; marginal summaries throughout. Complete.
Binding: Contemporary dark calf, raised bands, red-orange morocco lettering piece ("Thümmigs Naturs-Begebenheiten") with gilt dentelle borders, edges stained red.
Condition: Binding heavily worn: headcap chipped away with the headband exposed, losses along the joints and at the corners, and the rear cover with extensive old surface loss to the leather (stable erosion from damp and insect activity, the board itself sound); internally sound and relatively fresh, toned with scattered staining and foxing, dampstaining to some margins. A well-used, unrestored copy, priced accordingly.
The frontispiece shows a city rising: masons on scaffolds, blocks and beams scattered in the foreground, a banner overhead reading "His condimus urbes" — with these we build cities. It is a fitting motto for the whole Wolffian project, of which this pocket-sized book is one of the most appealing productions: the conviction that understanding nature's strangest performances, brick by rational brick, builds the world men live in. And the performances gathered here are strange indeed. The tour opens soberly, with why the same object weighs differently at different places on the earth. Within pages we are at a wonderful well in Poland whose waters catch fire, discovered, the author tells us, only by an extraordinary accident after long years of ignorance. There follow a board that wept more resin than the whole board weighed, reported to Fontenelle at the Paris Academy; an earthquake at Villa Nova in Portugal in 1722; the sun itself hanging in a clear sky over Ulm on Pentecost evening 1721, its body plainly visible for hours "without brightness or rays," like a moon at noon. And in the book's most unforgettable chapter comes the case, solemnly relayed from the Breslau medical annals, of a young dog vomited up alive out of a man's stomach, head like a cat's, preserved afterward in spirits for the Tsar's own collection. Each marvel is patiently walked back from portent to physics. The first chapter opens beneath a woodcut of the radiant triangle crowned, the name of God blazing over the wonders.
The author's story is one of the poignant episodes of the German Enlightenment. Ludwig Philipp Thümmig came to Halle at twenty and became the most devoted and most gifted of Christian Wolff's disciples. When the Pietists engineered Wolff's famous expulsion in 1723 — the king giving Germany's greatest philosopher forty-eight hours to leave Prussia or hang — Thümmig shared his master's fall and followed him out. Wolff's recommendation placed him at the Collegium Carolinum in Kassel. There he wrote the systematic Latin digest of Wolff's philosophy that carried it across Europe, and there he died in 1728, thirty years old. The title page of this posthumous new edition calls him "weiland," the late, Professor at the Carolinum. The preface is by Wolff himself, billed in red ink as Herr Regierungs-Rath Wolffens. The book was printed at Marburg, Wolff's city of exile, by his own publisher there, Philipp Casimir Müller, in 1735.
This copy is complete, in its contemporary dark calf with an orange-red morocco label lettered "Thümmigs Naturs-Begebenheiten." The binding is heavily worn. The spine-head is chipped away, and the rear cover has lost much of its leather surface in old, stable erosion. The text within is sound and fresh by comparison. As a reading experience it is exactly what an Enlightenment book of wonders should be: small enough for a coat pocket, dense with burning springs and darkened suns.
THÜMMIG, Ludwig Philipp (1697-1728). Versuch einer gründlichen Erläuterung der merckwürdigsten Begebenheiten in der Natur, wodurch man zur innersten Erkänntnis derselben geführet wird. "Neue Auflage... nebst einer Vorrede Herrn Regierungs-Rath Wolffens" [preface by Christian Wolff]. Marburg: bey Philipp Casimir Müller, 1735. Second (first Marburg) edition; first published Halle 1723.
Physical Description: Duodecimo, 312 pp. plus register ([14] leaves), Inhalt ([2] leaves), and terminal blank, title printed in red and black. Engraved frontispiece ("His condimus urbes," a city under construction); woodcut headpiece with the Tetragrammaton in a crowned radiant triangle at the opening of the first essay; marginal summaries throughout. Complete.
Binding: Contemporary dark calf, raised bands, red-orange morocco lettering piece ("Thümmigs Naturs-Begebenheiten") with gilt dentelle borders, edges stained red.
Condition: Binding heavily worn: headcap chipped away with the headband exposed, losses along the joints and at the corners, and the rear cover with extensive old surface loss to the leather (stable erosion from damp and insect activity, the board itself sound); internally sound and relatively fresh, toned with scattered staining and foxing, dampstaining to some margins. A well-used, unrestored copy, priced accordingly.
