Kircher (Athanasius) Ars Magna Sciendi, 2 parts in 1, first edition, separate engraved title to each part, letterpress title with woodcut printer's device, engraved portrait of Emperor Leopold, one engraved plate depicting the 'Arbor Philosophica Universae cognitionis Typus', 4 letter-press tables, double page and/or folding, engraved diagrams in text, those on fols. B3r and Y3r with volvelles (bound at Y2r), numerous woodcut illustrations, decorated initials, and large tailpieces, four verso paper repairs for small marginal losses (letterpress title, A4, a folding table, P6), extensive browning, some faint damp-staining and foxing or spots, contemporary calf, discretely rebacked and retaining large central portion of original backstrip, corners worn, folio, Johannes Jansson van Waesberghe and the widow of Elizeus Weyerstraet, 1669.

⁂ First edition copy of one of the most influential works by the well-known German Jesuit, who was an eclectic scholar, inventor, collector, and founder of the Museum Kircherianum in the Roman College. In this monumental work, which is dedicated to Emperor Leopold I, Kircher builds an exhaustive scientific system based on logical combinations and symbolic logic formulae capable of expressing each truth; it thus represents one of the most celebrated seventeenth-century attempts at creating a universal language for scientists and philosophers to describe and circumscribe all knowledge into a unified system.

Literature: Merrill 22.