Difference between revisions of "Athanasius Kircher"

A scientific star in his day, towards the end of his life he was eclipsed by the rationalism of René Descartes and others. In the late 20th century, however, the aesthetic qualities of his work again began to be appreciated. One modern scholar, Alan Cutler, described Kircher as "a giant among seventeenth-century scholars," and "one of the last thinkers who could rightfully claim all knowledge as his domain." Another scholar, Edward W. Schmidt, referred to Kircher as "the last Renaissance man." In ''A Man of Misconceptions'', his 2012 book about Kircher, John Glassie writes that while "many of Kircher's actual ideas today seem wildly off-base, if not simply bizarre," he was "a champion of wonder, a man of awe-inspiring erudition and inventiveness," whose work was read "by the smartest minds of the time."