Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method.

ONE OF THE FORERUNNERS OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY COMPUTERS

First edition, American issue. Two volumes bound in one. 8vo. xvi, [iii]-vii, [1, blank], 463, [1, blank]; 480 pp., engraved frontispiece of 'The Logical Machine'. Original brick red pebble-grain cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, covers panelled in blind (small contemporary bookseller's label to front pastedown, neat ownership inscriptions to front free endpaper, two small marginal annotations to Vol. 1, pencilled annotations to rear free endpaper; rebacked with the original laid down, a very good copy). New York, Macmillan and Co.

A major contribution to the philosophy of science by the economist and logician William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882), Including an engraved frontispiece of the famous ‘logical piano' or logical machine demonstrated by Jevons before the Royal Society in January 1870 that was “later to be recognised as one of the forerunners of twentieth-century computers, and is preserved in the History of Science Museum at Oxford” (ODNB). 

"For its time The Principles of Science was a remarkable achievement, anticipating the approach of more recent works on the philosophy of science and showing Jevons's ability not only to think through the principles of reasoning, but to illustrate their application in a wide range of natural sciences, with which he displayed impressive familiarity" (ODNB).

This scarce 'Special American Edition' was produced using the original sheets of the first edition published in England earlier in the same year, bound with a cancel title page in one volume rather than two. 

Stock Code: 245714