Logica Racional, Geometrica, e Analitica

Lisbon: Jozé Antonio Plates, 1744. Hardcover. Very Good. Folio, three parts in one volume (293 x 198mm). Pagination: [36], 151, [1]; 270; 224 pages,
including half-title “Logica Racional, Geometrica, e Analitica.” Collation: *(3, lacking initial blank), a-h(2), A-Z(2), Aa-Pp(2), A-Z(2), Aa-Zz(2), Aaa-Yyy(2), A-Z(2), Aa-Zz(2), Aaa-Kkk(2). Engraved frontispiece portrait of the dedicatee the Infante Antonio of Portugal in three-quarter view signed by Vieira Lusitano (Portuguese engraver, 1699–1783); copperplate engraved chapter vignettes and historiated initials of muses, geometric and algebraic diagrams throughout. Title page printed in red and black. Printed catchwords. Contemporary crimson morocco, probably originating in the Iberian Peninsula, extravagantly gilt-tooled in panel design incorporating floreate devices, birds, tassels and scrollwork, marbled endpapers; (spine somewhat faded with head and tail restored, endpapers renewed; occasional dampstaining along top edges, contents otherwise clean and good). Bookplate of 20th-century collector Anthony Godwin Hail on front pastedown.

First edition, and wide-margined copy, of this important three-part treatise on Cartesian logic, the first ever written in Portuguese, titled Logica Racional, Geometrica, e Analitica. Manuel de Azevedo Fortes was an Enlightenment-era Portuguese mathematician and a Chief Royal Engineer. Among his many pursuits at the Royal Academy of Portuguese History in Lisbon, Azevedo Fortes is credited with creating the first ‘scientific’ map of the country in 1730. His Logica Racional, Geometrica, e Analitica presented questions of algebra, geometry, and modern philosophy by comparing the methods of John Locke and Descartes. This pioneering vernacular work, contained in a gilt-stamped Iberian stylized binding, was one the first publications to introduce in Portugal the scientific rationality of the Enlightenment. Rare. OCLC locates institutional copies in the US at the Catholic University of America and the Newberry Library.