Principia Mathematica
Cambridge: University Press, 1910, 1912, 1913.
First edition. Three volumes. ix, [5], 666; xxxiv, 772; x, 491 pp. Bound in publisher's navy cloth, spines lettered in gilt; housed in custom folding cloth box. Good condition overall. Unsophisticated copies, pleasantly not-ex-library (very uncommon in commerce thus), but certainly fragile. Rubbing to lettering, staining and edge wear to cloth, boards exposed at extremities; contents toned, brittle with age, and sometimes faintly foxed. Hinges of Vol. I starting; rear board split at head but holding; a few pages detached; about a fifth of pp.1-2 torn off but retained; circular tear to last several leaves of the volume. Vol. II has occasional marginal chipping including to lower corners of about 160 pages, not affecting text; tiny wormholes to inner margins of prelims; hinges worn with a few pages detached. Vol. III cloth chipped along edges; bump to bottom inner corner of textblock.
A truly rare first edition of one of the major intellectual landmarks of the 20th century. It marked a milestone in the evolution of mathematical logic, upon which the development of computers and the information sciences would depend, by attempting to construct "the whole body of mathematical doctrine by logical deduction from the basis of a small number of primitive ideas and a small number of primitive principles of logical inference" (DSB, XII, p. 14). In the discipline of philosophy this work represents a culmination of centuries of empiricist and rationalist discourse, an ambitious masterwork.
Price: $100,000.00