Mairan - Dissertation sur la Glace - 1749

Fourth and best edition, partly original, of this study composed for the prize of the Academy of Bordeaux, where it appeared for the first time in 1716. It is also the first illustrated edition of this text, embellished with a frontispiece by Ingram and five folding plates.

The Dissertation on Ice, curious and rare testimony of the research carried out in the Enlightenment century on natural phenomena. Published at a time when experimental physics is undergoing a decisive growth, this work aims to explain the formation of ice, its properties and the mechanisms of freezing, by crossing empirical observations and theoretical hypotheses.

Placed in the context of contemporary work on heat and cold, this dissertation participates in the scientific debates that then mobilized European savants, in the wake of nascent physics research and natural history. It illustrates the effort of eighteenth-century authors to understand the laws of nature before the modern formalization of thermodynamics.

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MAIRAN (Jean-Jacques Dortous de) - Dissertation on Ice, or physical explanation of the formation of ice, and of its various phenomena.

In Paris, by the royal printing-office, 1749.

Complete, 1 volume in-12 [384pp, (XX)] - illustrated edition of this text, adorned with a frontispiece by Ingram and with 5 folding plates.

Magnificent decorative full calf binding of the period. Spine with raised bands richly ornamented. Wear at the corners and at the heads and tails, as well as on the boards. Interior fresh.

Very beautiful copy.