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Athanasius Kircher »

Authors: Paula Findlen, Paula Findlen
ISBN-13: 9780415940160, ISBN-10: 0415940168
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
Date Published: February 2003
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Paula Findlen

Book Synopsis

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.-

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction : the last man who knew everything ... or did he? : Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (1602-80) and his world	1
1	Kircher's rome	51
2	Reverie in time of plague : Athanasius Kircher and the plague epidemic of 1656	63
3	Kircher and his critics : censorial practice and pragmatic disregard in the society of Jesus	79
4	'Quasi-optical palingenesis' : the circulation of portraits and the image of Kircher	105
5	Copts and scholars : Athanasius Kircher in Peiresc's Republic of letters	133
6	Four trees, some amulets, and the seventy-two names of God : Kircher reveals the Kabbalah	149
7	Kircher's chronology	171
8	Athanasius Kircher, Giordano Bruno, and the panspermia of the infinite universe	191
9	Father Athanasius on the isthmus of a middle state : understanding Kircher's paleontology	207
10	The angel and the compass : Athanasius Kircher's magnetic geography	239
11	Magnetic language : Athanasius Kircher and communication	263
12	Publishing the polygraphy : manuscript, instrument, and print in the work of Athanasius Kircher	283
13	Private and public knowledge : Kircher, esotericism, and the republic of letters	297
14	Baroque science between the old and the new world : Father Kircher and his colleague Valentin Stansel (1621-1705)	311
15	A Jesuit's books in the new world : Athanasius Kircher and his American readers	329
16	True lies : Athanasius Kircher's China illustrata and the life story of a Mexican mystic	365
17	Athanasius Kircher's China illustrata (1667) : an apologia pro vita sua	383
	Epilogue : understanding Kircher in context	405
	Bibliography	421
	Notes on contributors	447
	Index	451

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Athanasius Kircher »

Author Biography: Paula Findlen

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