Beschreibung:

LULL, Ramon (c.1235-c.1315). Ars inventiva veritatis. Tabula generalis. Commentum in easdem ipsius Raymundi. Edited by Alonso de Proaza. Valencia: Diego de Gumiel, 12 February 1515.
LULL, Ramon (c.1235-c.1315). Ars inventiva veritatis. Tabula generalis. Commentum in easdem ipsius Raymundi. Edited by Alonso de Proaza. Valencia: Diego de Gumiel, 12 February 1515. 2° (304 X 213mm). Title printed in red and black with the woodcut arms of Cardinal Jimenez and within a woodcut border, woodcut initials, woodcut illustrations, four with manuscript volvelles [at a6, k2, A1,and E3], and two with touches of hand-colour. (Some wormholes, occasional light marginal soiling or light dampstaining.) 20th-century pigskin-backed wooden boards, spine titled in manuscript and incorrectly dated 1500. Provenance : Thomas Whythers? (title signature in a 16th-century hand) – ‘Hiber ab 88 ad 1590’ (neat inscription on the blank verso of the last leaf) — purchased by the Royal Institution on 20 April 1807 for 16s. FIRST EDITION of Lull’s ‘art of finding truth’, which aimed to unify all knowledge into a single system. It is characterised by a combinatory method, making use of volvelles and a symbolic alphabet; ‘these features justify its classification among the forerunners of both modern symbolic logic and computer science, with its systematically exhaustive consideration of all possible combinations of the material under examination, reduced to a symbolic coding’; it ‘inspired Leibniz’s dream of a universal algebra four centuries later’ (DSB).The manuscript volvelles in this copy were evidently inserted by an early owner: the copy in the Bavarian State Library does not include them, nor are they mentioned in the references consulted. RARE: ABPC records just the defective Madsden copy, lacking five leaves (sold, Sotheby’s, 14 March 1996, lot 236); RBH adds two copies, one sold in 1975 and the other in 1955. Brunet III 1233 (‘a rare edition, the oldest known of this work’); Palau 143849.