Descartes (René) Le Monde de Mr Descartes, ou, le Traité de la Lumiere...avec un Discours de l'Action des Corps, & un autre des Fièvres..., first edition, second issue, title with woodcut device of bird with snake in its beak, woodcut head- & tail-pieces and initials, woodcut diagrams/illustrations in text, with final blank, contemporary ink signature to head of title crossed out and another to foot, light browning, a couple of illustrations shaved at edge, lacking front free endpaper, contemporary calf, spine gilt, rubbed and slightly stained, joints split, spine ends and corners worn, [Guibert p.211 no.1; Tchemerzine IV p.311 imprint b; Norman 629, later issue with Girard imprint], 8vo, Paris, Michel Bobin & Nicolas le Gas, 1664.

⁂ Posthumous work, written in the author's youth but suppressed following the trial of Galileo in 1633, which presents a more or less complete statement of Descartes' cosmology. His great achievement was to develop a system of physics based on a simple theory of matter and a few simple laws - very similar to Newton's laws of motion - which also allowed him to account for all the known properties of light.