A Theory of Natural Philosophy [Paperback]

Roger Joseph Boscovich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1966

Publisher: Chicago, London, Open Court Publishing Company Publication date: 1922 Subjects: Physics Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 251 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 15, 1966)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262520036
• ISBN-13: 978-0262520034
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,163,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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3.0 out of 5 stars Left hand knows not what the right hand is doing, December 6, 2011

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Pedantic Jesuit - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A theory of natural philosophy (Paperback)

I am very grateful that Nabu reprinted Child's lovely edition of this important 18th Century work. The original 1922 bilingual edition was most thoughtfully prepared by J M Child, and exquisitely executed with financial support from the then new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

As advertised, "This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923." I have seen the original, and I have seen other phototypical editions of pre-WWII books. As such reproductions go, the quality of this one is fair. Unlike the original, which uses rubrics (red print), this edition only uses black ink. The corrigenda (p. xix) and errata (pp. 469-470) of the original edition have not been corrected in the text. Some of the small print is a little faint. However, these minor imperfections come as no surprise.

There is one oversight, however, which I find inexcusable. In the original page layout, the Latin text was on the left-hand page (the even page) and the corresponding English translation was on the right-hand page (the odd page). In this reproduction, there is a one-page offset, which means that the even pages ended up on the right and the odd pages on the left, and therefore the Latin and the English texts happen to be on the front and the back of the same sheet of paper, instead of side by side. In order to see the parallel passages, you need to flip the sheet. This is annoying enough in and of itself but there are several additional inopportune consequences. The page numbers (and the marginal summaries) are now on the inner margin, impeding searches. Furthermore, in 1922, the editors decided to deal with full page illustrations by placing them first to the right of the Latin text, and then, on the next two-page spread, to the left of the English translation, the illustration being identical in both cases for the reader's convenience. With the one-page offset, however, this means that Nabu gives us a number of two-page spreads (pp. 41-42, 79-80, 133-134, 137-138, 165-166, 169-170, 173-174, 183-184, 217-218, 221-222, 225-226, 231-232, 235-236, 239-240, 243-244, 341-342, 425-426, 429-430, 439-440) with a full-page illustration on the left-hand page and exactly the same illustration on the right-hand page!

My complaints relate to a single error of judgement, viz., allowing a single-page offset to creep into the pagination. Nonetheless, I find that its consequences detract considerably, and needlessly, from an otherwise nice volume.