Instauratio Magna.

'a landmark in the advancement of human thought'. The first edition, second issue of the Novum Organum, bound with the first edition, first issue of Bacon's collected works in Latin. Together the texts cover all that was completed of Sir Francis Bacon's ambitious project, the Instauratio Magna ('the great renewal'), to reorganise the nature of philosophical inquiry, introducing in the process the modern scientific method.

In Bacon's own words, the Instauratio Magna was to be 'no more but a new logic, teaching to invent and judge by induction, (as finding syllogism incompetent for sciences of nature), and thereby to make philosophy and sciences both more true and more active' (Letter to King James, Bacon 1874, pp119–20). This ambition to bridge the old and new worlds is symbolised in the famous engraved title-page by Simon van der Passe showing a sailing ship passing through the Pillars of Hercules: 'Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia' ('Many will pass through and knowledge will be the greater').

The project was originally intended to form six parts, but only the Novum Organum ('a new logic'), the second part of Bacon's plan, was complete at the time of publication in 1620. The first part of the Instauratio was to be an expanded edition in Latin of his Advancement of Learning. This was published three years later in 1623 as De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (also known as 'Instaurationis Magnae Pars Prima').

The text of De Dignitate was later included in the collected works of Bacon, published as Operum Moralium et Civilium in 1638, included here in the first issue. A second issue of the Operum appeared the same year, bound with unsold sheets from the Novum Organum, usually the a printed title substituted for the famous engraved title by van der Passe (see Gibson 197). The reissue has a revised general title stating 'Adjecti sunt, in Calce Operis, Libri duo Instaurationis Magnae' ('appended here the second book of the Instauratio Magna').

Our copy with an interesting early manuscript note to the front free endpaper comparing the work to '[Francisci] patricii sensensi, Episopi Caietani, de regno et regis institutione libri 9 8o' ('Francesco Patrizi of Siena, Bishop of Gaeta's treatise On Kingship and the Rule of Kings, 9 books, number 8'). Patrizi was an important forerunner to the political theorists of the sixteenth century, and was amongst the first Western philosophers since antiquity to devote sustained attention to the reform of republican and monarchic governments.

Bacon 'saw clearly the limitations of Aristotelian and scholastic methods and the growing breach between the thinking of his time and that of the Middle Ages... As a philosopher Bacon's influence on Locke and through him on subsequent English schools of psychology and ethics was profound. Leibniz, Huygens and particularly Robert Boyle were deeply indebted to him, as were the Encyclopédistes, and Voltaire, who called him "le père de la philosophic experimentale"' (PMM).

'The importance of the Novum Organum in the history of scientific thought can hardly be exaggerated... It fully explains Bacon's philosophic reasoning founded upon the new Inductive method and was prepared throughout with the utmost care. Later generations have recognized its importance and it is constantly referred to as a landmark in the advancement of human thought' (Pforzheimer). A 'monumental work on the philosophy of science' (Horblit).

Two works in one vol.; folio (30 x 20.5 cm); [Instauratio] first edition, second issue; engraved title by Simon vander Passe, historiated woodcut initials, e3 cancel, e4r unnumbered, with errata and without Norton's name in colophon, blank leaf bound after dedication, internally clean; [Operum] first edition, first issue; engraved portrait frontispiece bound after dedication to the Historia, woodcut device to title, woodcut initials, head and tailpieces, blank leaf bound after A3, occasional toning, 2H3 torn with minor loss to upper margin not affecting text, small hole to 3O4 with loss to a few letters, slight loss to margin of 4A1; text in Latin, shelf-mark in pen to front pastedown, partially excised MS note in pen to front free endpaper verso; contemporary polished calf, double gilt rules, gilt spine in 7 banded compartments, joints and spine caps expertly restored, edges sprinkled red, very good; collation: [16, including frontispiece], 176, 179-386, [16], 475, [1]; [12, including engraved title], 172, 181-360, 36, [2]pp.

PMM 119; Gibson 103b & 196; ESTC S122428 & S106899; Grolier/Horblit 8b; cf.Pforzheimer App. 1.