Traité de Mécanique Céleste.

'the sequel to newton'

First edition and a close-to-complete set of this monumental work of celestial mechanics, the most important after Newton's Principia.

Traité de Mécanique Céleste is bibliographically complex, and 'any or all of the supplements may be lacking in some sets' (Hook & Norman 1277). This set conforms to the collation laid out by Hook & Norman save that the second errata statement in volume IV is on the list of tables rather than on 2K4v, and volume V is lacking the supplement, Avertissement and part-titles. All the other supplements are present. There are two issues of volumes I and II, this being the issue with the imprint of Crapelet and Duprat and the French Republican date AN VII on the title pages.

'Here Laplace applied his mathematical theories of probability to celestial bodies and concluded that the apparent changes in the motion of planets and their satellites are changes of long periods, and that the solar system is in all probability very stable' (Hook & Norman). This was a level of certainty absent from the work of Newton who, 'like Euler, was doubtful whether the variable forces acting in the solar system could be permanently maintained in an equilibrium' without the intervention of a creator (Printing and the Mind of Man 252).

'Laplace maintained that while all planets revolve around the sun their eccentricities and the inclinations of their orbits to each other will always remain small. He also showed that all these irregularities in movements and positions in the heavens were self-correcting, so that the whole solar system appeared to be mechanically stable. The universe was really a great self-regulating machine and the whole solar system could continue on its existing plan for an immense period of time... Laplace also offered a brilliant explanation of the secular inequalities of the mean motion of the moon about the earth - a problem which Euler and Lagrange had failed to solve' and he 'investigated the theory of the tides and calculated from them the mass of the moon' (PMM).

Famously, when asked by Napoleon why his book did not mention God, Laplace replied, 'I had no need of such a hypothesis'.

First editions; 5 volumes, 4to (25.5 x 20 cm); engraved folding plate in volume IV, some light spotting and toning of the contents; volumes I-IV in recent brown quarter morocco, marbled sides and matching endpapers, spines gilt in compartments, double gilt fillets, top edges gilt and gauffered with floral roll, blue silk bookmarks, volume V in similar brown half morocco with marbled sides and endpapers, spine gilt in compartments, edges with old red sprinkling, bindings very lightly rubbed at the extremities, 368pp, 382pp, 303pp with 24pp supplement, 347pp with supplements of 65 and 78pp, 419pp.

Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous in Science 63; Hook & Norman, Norman Library of Science and Medicine 1277; Printing and the Mind of Man 252