Athanasius Kircher, le théâtre du monde

This richly illustrated, superb work, is dedicated to Athanasius Kircher. Mathematician, linguist, archaeologist, naturalist, religious historian, engineer, geologist..., in continual dialogue every aspect of the universe which brought this Jesuit to the centre of the world of scholarship. His tireless curiosity led to endless discovery: he was the first person to detect sunspot activity, to identify the rings of Saturn; as a vulcanologist, he descended into Vesuvius, he determined the movements of the Earth’s crust, designed the map of sea currents; at the microscope, he detected animalcules in the blood of victims of the 1656 plague, suggesting that the illness was caused by germs. And so many machines are the fruit of his inventiveness and his writing on magnetism, acoustics and optics! His work is a celebration of the wonders of creation, an act of natural magic produced by the universal magnetism which infuses divine wisdom into the three levels of the created world: the archetypal, sidereal and elemental, of which man is the reflection, the microcosm. 

Une étonnante époque. Itinéraire d’une encyclopédie hermétique. Frontispices. Les illustrations dans l’œuvre de Kircher. L’Antiquité incomprise. L’Antiquité préservée. L’Antiquité imaginée. Histoire naturelle : le feu et l’eau. Histoire naturelle : l’air et la terre. Musique. Machines antiques et modernes. Machines magnétiques et optiques. Cartes et plans. ExoticaImages des dieux. Images didactiques