Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything Review

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Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything ReviewAthanasius Kircher hasn't been studied in a terribly coherent way, in general. He was a 17th-century Jesuit who studied everything, collected everything, and at times seemed to know everything. Perhaps most famously, he formulated translations for hieroglyphic inscriptions on Egyptian monuments and such; unfortunately, without the Rosetta Stone and Champollion, he was dead wrong about nearly all of this. Nevertheless he was a fascinating figure situated at a major crossroads of Baroque intellectual culture.
The negative about this volume is the usual one: because it is an edited volume, there still isn't any coherent argument made, nor any agreement. Indeed, it seems that the authors duck and weave around a number of major issues, as though they think others in the book will take them up. But since there is so little really serious scholarship readily available, this is an important addition to the little library.
I can't really say that there are certain "shining stars" in the volume. All the essays have strengths and weaknesses; it really depends what you're interested in. That may seem like a cop-out, but if you know something about Kircher, you can see why it comes up: he was interested in everything, after all, and generally published on it as well. Consequently you might be intrested in Egypt and find several essays interesting, and then think the essays on magnetism and biological wonders and Chinese very boring indeed. But what if you care mostly about Kircher's important contributions (often via Gaspar Schott) to the study of magnetism, and care nothing about linguistics? And so on.
Fortunately, the volume is a relatively inexpensive paperback, so there's no reason not to buy it and dip in. When Daniel Stolzenberg's book comes out, we'll maybe have a solid foundation to work from as well. Now if only we could get some decent editions of Kircher's actual work in translation....Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything Overview

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