De rerum natura iuxta propria principia, liber primus, & secundus, denuo editi. [bound with, of the same author:] De his, quae in aëre fiunt; & de terraemotibus, liber vnicus. [bound with, of the same author:] De colorum generatione opusculum. [bound with, of the same author:] De mari, liber vnicus.”

"4to (222 x 157 mm.), 4 works bound together in a good 19th cent. vellum binding, with manuscript title at lower edge, a clean copy, with wide margins; a very light touch of color at printer’s devices. Each work with title-page and printer’s device, leaves 95, (1 orig. blank); 14 [i.e. 13], [1 orig. blank]; leaves 7, [1 orig. blank]; leaves 12, [2]. A fine Sammelband with four works by Telesio, the first is the scarce second edition of his major work ‘De rerum natura’, which had been already appeared in Rome, printed by Blado in 1565, whereas the three other works by Telesio are first editions, incl. his scarce work on atmosphere and earthquakes. ‘T. was, unwittingly, helping to contribute to the breakdown of the barrier that Aristotle had set up between celestial and sublunary physics, the breakdown triumphantly announced by Galileo in his 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems'. T. also introduced concepts of space and time that anticipated the absolute space and time of Newtonian physics’ (DSB). ‘Bernardino Telesio (1509–1588) belongs to a group of independent philosophers of the late Renaissance who left the universities in order to develop philosophical and scientific ideas beyond the restrictions of the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition. Authors in the early modern period referred to these philosophers as ‘novateurs’ and ‘modern’. In contrast to his successors Patrizi and Campanella, Telesio was a fervent critic of metaphysics and insisted on a purely empiricist approach in natural philosophy—he thus became a forerunner of early modern empiricism. He had a remarkable influence on Tommaso Campanella, Giordano Bruno, Pierre Gassendi, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and on free thinkers like Guillaume Lamy and Giulio Cesare Vanini [.] He was perhaps the most strident critic of metaphysics in late Renaissance times. It was obviously due to his excellent relationships with popes and clerics that he was not persecuted and was able during his own lifetime to publish his rather heterodox writings, which went on the index shortly after his death. His principal work is the aforementioned De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (‘On the Nature of Things according to their Own Principles’), which in the last augmented edition of the author's hand appeared in Naples in 1586. The De rerum natura is a huge treatise in nine books which deals with cosmology, biology, sense perception, reason and ethics. (These) Smaller treatises deal with a variety of themes such as colours, dreams, geology and meteorology, (De iis quae in aere fiunt et de terremotibus; De colorum generatione; De mari).», Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I. Adams T 292; Houzeau-L. 2641; Riccardi I/2, 512, 4. II. Adams T-290, Poggendorff II, 1077; Riccardi I/2, 512, 1; III : Adams T-289; Riccardi I/2, 512, 2; IV. Adams T-291; Riccardi I/2, 512, 3."