Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything

by Findlen,Paula; Findlen,Paula

• ISBN13: 9780415940153
• ISBN10: 041594015X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) -- German Jesuit, occultist, polymath - was one of most curious figures in the history of science. He dabbled in all the mysteries of his time: the heavenly bodies, sound amplification, museology, botany, Asian languages, the pyramids of Egypt -- almost anything incompletely understood. Kircher coined the term electromagnetism, printed Sanskrit for the first time in a Western book, and built a famous museum collection. His wild, beautifully illustrated books are sometimes visionary, frequently wrong, and yet compelling documents in the history of ideas. They are being rediscovered in our own time. This volume contains new essays on Kircher and his world by leading historians and historians of science, including Stephen Jay Gould, Ingrid Rowland, Anthony Grafton, Daniel Stoltzenberg, Paula Findlen, and Barbara Stafford.-

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: ``The Last Man Who Knew Everything or Did He?: Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (1602--80) and His World''	1	(50)
Paula Findlen
Section I: The Art of Being Kircher
``Kircher's Rome''	51	(12)
Eugenio Lo Sardo
``Reverie in Time of Plague: Athanasius Kircher and the Plague Epidemic of 1656''	63	(16)
Martha Baldwin
``Kircher and His Critics: Censorial Practice and Pragmatic Disregard in the Society of Jesus''	79	(26)
Harald Siebert
``'Quasi-Optical Palingenesis': The Circulation of Portraits and the Image of Kircher''	105	(28)
Angela Mayer-Deutsch
Section II: The Sciences of Erudition
``Copts and Scholars: Athanasius Kircher in Peiresc's Republic of Letters''	133	(16)
Peter N. Miller
``Four Trees, Some Amulets, and the Seventy-two Names of God: Kircher Reveals the Kabbalah''	149	(22)
Daniel Stolzenberg
``Kircher's Chronology''	171	(20)
Anthony Grafton
Section III: The Mysteries of Man and the Cosmos
``Athanasius Kircher, Giordano Bruno, and the Panspermia of the Infinite Universe''	191	(16)
Ingrid D. Rowland
``Father Athanasius on the Isthmus of a Middle State: Understanding Kircher's Paleontology''	207	(32)
Stephen Jay Gould
``The Angel and the Compass: Athanasius Kircher's Magnetic Geography''	239	(24)
Michael John Gorman
Section IV: Communicating Knowledge
``Magnetic Language: Athanasius Kircher and Communication''	263	(20)
Haun Saussy
``Publishing the Polygraphy: Manuscript, Instrument, and Print in the Work of Athanasius Kircher''	283	(14)
Nick Wilding
``Private and Public Knowledge: Kircher, Esotericism, and the Republic of Letters''	297	(14)
Noel Malcolm
Section V: The Global Shape of Knowledge
``Baroque Science between the Old and the New World: Father Kircher and His Colleague Valentin Stansel (1621--1705)''	311	(18)
Carlos Ziller Camenietzki
``A Jesuit's Books in the New World: Athanasius Kircher and His American Readers''	329	(36)
Paula Findlen
``True Lies: Athanasius Kircher's China illustrata and the Life Story of a Mexican Mystic''	365	(18)
J. Michelle Molina
``Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata (1667): An Apologia Pro Vita Sua''	383	(22)
Florence Hsia
Epilogue: Understanding Kircher in Context	405	(16)
Antonella Romano
Bibliography	421	(26)
Notes on Contributors	447	(4)
Index	451