Wallace, Alfred Russel. Il Posto dell'Uomo nell'Universo: Studi sui risultati delle ricerche scientifiche sulla unità o pluralità dei mondi; Traduzione dell' inglese riveduta e preceduta da uno studio critico, di Giacoo Lo Forte. Milano-Palermo-Napoli: Sandron, 1906. [1005]
Vellum spine & corners, red leather spine title label, 21.5 x 14 cms, 436 pp., light foxing, folding chart of star views at back. Very good. Hardcover.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), Welsh humanist, naturalist, and geographer who formulated a theory of evolution before Charles Darwin published his own theories.
This is a translation of Man's Place in the Universe.
"Wallace's 1904 book Man's Place in the Universe was the first serious attempt by a biologist to evaluate the likelihood of life on other planets. He concluded that the Earth was the only planet in the solar system that could possibly support life, mainly because it was the only one in which water could exist in the liquid phase. More controversially he maintained that it was unlikely that other stars in the galaxy could have planets with the necessary properties (the existence of other galaxies not having been proved at the time)." - wikipedia.