Science

The sciences, in the antiquarian book trade, are read through first editions of learned memoirs, correspondence between experimenters, engraved plates intended to depict observation, and occasionally manuscripts of calculations or laboratory notes. Heirs to ancient learning, they were renewed during the Renaissance through experimentation, then consolidated in the 17th and 18th centuries under the influence of the academies and of method.

Here the collector seeks traces of the discoveries and controversies that founded modern science: the rarity of a princeps printing, an anatomical or astronomical engraving, the provenance of a copy that once belonged to a scholar. Each piece bears witness to a moment when the observation of the world became transmissible knowledge.