DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE TWO CHIEF WORLD SYSTEMS, PTOLEMAIC AND COPERNICAN.

Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA:: University of California Press,, 1953.. Hardcover first edition -. Very near fine in cranberry cloth with a paper title label on the spine in a near fine dustjacket (hint of an erasure on the front endpaper, toning to the dj, small chip at the top of the spine.). First printing. A completely unabridged translation in modern English of this classic work in the history of modern science by Stillman Drake, based on Galileo's own copy of the first edition, with his notations. Unusual for the time, this was written in Italian, rather than Latin, because it was intended to reach the public, not just scholars. As a punishment Galileo suffered imprisonment, but he used that time to add passages to the Dialogue - passages which are included in this volume for the first time in English. The foreword by Albert Einstein - in which he comments "In advocating and fighting for the Copernican theory Galileo was not only motivated by a striving to simplify the representation of the celestial motions. His aim was to substitute for a petrified and barren system of ideas the unbiased and strenuous quest for a deeper and more consistent comprehension of the physical and astronomical facts." - appears in both the original German and in English translation by Sonja Bargmann. Illustrated witha frontispiece portrait and with the original title page. Notes, index. xxvii, 496 pp.