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Argentinae (i.e Strassburg], Lazarus Zetzner, 1598. 8vo. Very nice 19th century half calf with richly gilt spine. Some browning and spotting, but overall a nice copy. Many woodcut diagrams in the text. Woodcut printer's device to title-page. (24), 992, (32) pp. Scarce first edition of this seminal publication, which is practically solely responsible for the spreading of both Lullism and Bruno's mnemonic theories in the 17th century. This publication constitutes the standard work on Lull for more than a century and it directly influenced the most significant thinkers of the following century, e.g. Leibnitz, whose dream of a universal algebra was stimulated by the reading of Lull (and Bruno) in the present publication."In 1598, while the philosopher from Nola (i.e. Bruno) was in prison in Rome, Johann Heinrich Alsted together with the printer Lazarus Zetzner in Strasburg, published a great collection of the works by Raymond Lull and the most significant commentaries on Lullism, among them also some treatises by Bruno. Since then, Bruno's mnemonics was a basic component of all attempts made in the seventeenth century to set up a universal science on the basis of a theory of combinations interpreted in terms of Neo-Platonism. It was also Leibniz who was one of the first to assume similarities between Bruno's theory of the infinite and the Cartesian theory of vortices in an undetermined and infinite universe" Leibniz had had the opportunity to read these treatises in his capacity as librarian of the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel". (Blum, p. 110). "From another of Pierce's Lists we know that he possessed an important collection of Lullian and Lullist texts, namely the Renaissance edition by the famous Strasbourg editor Lazarus Zetzner: "Raymundi Lulli Opera ea quae ad adinventam ab ipso Artem universalem. pertinent" (printed first in 1598, then 1609, 1617 and, by his heirs, in 1651). This edition, which was very influential - the young Leibniz, for instance, acquainted himself with Llull through this anthology-, contains several works by Llull himself as well as those Renaissance commentaries on his works by Agrippa of Netteshein, Giordano Bruno." (Fidora, p. 181).This highly influential publication of Lull's "Opera" through which Leibniz and many of his contemporaries got acquainted with Lull and Bruno, contains seven genuine works by Lull (including the two most important works of the last period of the Art, the "Ars brevis" and the "Ars magna"), four works falsely attributed to Lull, Agrippa's "In Artem Brevem" - and Bruno's four highly important commentaries on Lull, being the "De Lulliano specierum scrutinio" (pp. 685-97), "De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana" (pp. 698-755), "De Progressu Logicae venationis" (pp. 756-62) and "De Lampade venatoria logicurum" (pp. 763-806), which constitute Bruno's most important logical treatises and his seminal writings on mnemonics. The four treatises originally appeared separately in 1587 and 1588 respectively, and all appear here for the second time (apart from the "De progressu", which also appeared together with the first printing of the "De Lampade venatoria logicorum" the following year and here thus appears for the third time). The first printings of these works are of impossible scarcity and hardly obtainable. These four groundbreaking works appear together for the first time in the present publication and it is through this second printing of them that 17th century thinkers such as Leibniz got acquainted with them. Raymond Lull (ca. 1232-1315) was one of the most important and influential philosophers and logicians of his time. He is considered a pioneer of several fields of science, now most notably computation theory. His works sparked Leibniz' interest in the field and drove him to his seminal invention. Lull invented an "art of finding truth" (often in Lullism referred to as "The Art"), which centuries later, when read in the present publication, stimulated Leibnitz' dream of.
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