Man of Misconceptions : The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change (9781101597033) (29 page)

acoustical tube “might extend itself”
: For Kircher's experiments with the acoustical tube on Mentorella, see Kircher,
Phonurgia Nova
, pp. 113–115.

Relocation of the museum
: See R. Garrucci, “Origini e Vicende del Museo Kircheriano dal 1651 al 1773,”
La Civiltà Cattolica
, ser. 10, vol. 12 (1879), pp. 727–739; Roberta Rezzi, “Il Kircheriano, da Museo d'Arte e di Meraviglie a Museo Archeologico,” in Maristella Casciato, Maria Grazia Ianniello, and Maria Vitale, eds.,
Enciclopedismo in Roma Barocca: Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e Museo Scientifico
(Venice: Marsilio, 1986), pp. 295–302.

“Thoroughly animated” . . . “For should these things”
: The Latin is in Garrucci, “Origini e Vicende del Museo Kircheriano,” pp. 729–731.

“Does the conference of learned persons please you?”
: In Findlen,
Possessing Nature
, p. 132.

French king himself had “deep respect” for his work
: Fletcher, “A Brief Survey of the Unpublished Correspondence,” pp. 155, 157.

Letters continued to arrive
: Fletcher, “Medical Men in the Correspondence,” pp. 270, 273, 274; John Fletcher, “Claude Fabri de Peiresc and the Other French Correspondents of Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680),”
Australian Journal of French Studies
9 (1972), p. 264.

rector of the Jesuit college of Vilnius
: Fletcher, “A Brief Survey of the Unpublished Correspondence,” p. 156.

“various practical problems”
: Findlen,
Possessing Nature
, p. 92. On Kircher and the ark, see Olaf Breidbach and Michael T. Ghiselin, “Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) on Noah's Ark: Baroque ‘Intelligent Design' Theory,”
Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences
57, no. 36 (December 28, 2006).

“born from rot”
: In Godwin,
Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World
, p. 120.

“upper part has the sex and appearance”
: In Reilly,
Athanasius Kircher, S.J.
, p. 169.

Chapter 20. Immune and Exempt

“by now is old”
: Baldigiani to Redi, April 1, 1675, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (BML), Redi 219, f. 148/100v.

“play a grand joke”
: Baldigiani to Redi, December 16, 1674, BML, Redi 219, f. 141/97r.

“written a long, rather questionable response”
: Baldigiani to Redi, n.d, BML, Redi 219, f. 200/142.

“Prof. Kircher is as obstinate as ever”
: Ibid.

“Yesterday morning he had his last communion”
: Baldigiani to Redi, Rome, March or May 10, 1675, BML, Redi 219, f.164/110r.

“a solitary and little-known man”
: Baldigiani to Redi, date unclear, 1677, BML, Redi 219, f. 183/126v.

“never shown himself”
: Baldigiani to Redi, n.d., BML, Redi 219, f. 200/142.

“First they pardoned themselves”
: Baldigiani to Redi, BML, February 15, 1677, Redi 219, f. 180/123v.

Possibility of feeble hens
: On Petrucci, see Baldwin, “The Snakestone Experiments,” p. 416.

“reckless and impudent slanderers” . . . “all Celebrated future centuries”
: Gioseffo Petrucci,
Prodomo Apologetico alli Studi Chircheriani
(Amsterdam: Jansson and Waesberg, 1677), pp. 3–4.

“constantly insisted on the marvelous virtues”
: Petrucci,
Prodomo Apologetico,
p. 21.

“He did not go according to the sentiments”
: Ibid., p. 22.

“The works of nature are prodigious”
: In Baldwin, “Athanasius Kircher and the Magnetic Philosophy,” p. 401.

“I have never understood”
: Galileo,
Discoveries and Opinions
, p. 231.

only two were sold
: See Baldigiani to Redi, August 14, 167[7?], BML, Redi 219, f. 203/144r.v.

Chapter 21. Mentorella

“These days, because of age”
: Baldigiani to Vincenzo Viviani, July 18, 1678, in Antonio Favaro, “Miscellanea Galileiana Inedita,”
Memorie del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti
22, p. 837.

“Many others”
: In Findlen, “The Last Man Who Knew Everything . . . Or Did He?,” p. 3.

“Philosophy is written”
: Galileo,
Discoveries and Opinions
, p. 237.

“A shape in space has given way”
: David Berlinski,
Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics
(New York: Modern Library, 2008), p. 40.

“expound” on “a part of Euclid”
: Evelyn,
Diary and Correspondence
, vol. 1, p. 132.

how to square the circle
: See Findlen, “The Last Man Who Knew Everything . . . Or Did He?,” p. 27.

“the Cabalists, Arabs, Gnostics” . . . “genuine and licit”
: Athanasius Kircher,
Arithmologia, sive, De Abditis Numerorum Mysteriis
 . . . (Rome: Varese, 1665), title page.

“Mystic Monad or, if you will” . . . “all creatures breathe numbers”
: Ibid., pp. 239–241.

“a reverberating sonic
boom!
”
: Berlinski,
Infinite Ascent
, p. 45.

“You must know that now”
: In Reilly,
Athanasius Kircher, S.J.
, p. 179.

“Decrepit and old, Professor Kircher”
: Baldigiani to Redi, n.d, BML, Redi 219, f. 204/145r.

It was God who “wished that I expend” . . . “And so, the subject matter”
:
Vita
, pp. 89–91.

“second childhood”
: Reilly,
Athanasius Kircher, S.J.
, p. 180.

Preparation of bodies
: Jean-Nicolas Gannal,
History of Embalming, and of Preparations in Anatomy, Pathology, and Natural History: Including an Account of a New Process for Embalming
, trans. Richard Harlan (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1840). See also William D. Haglund and Marcella H. Sorg,
Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains
(Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1997), p. 487; Pascale Trompette and Mélanie Lemonnier, “Funeral Embalming: The Transformation of a Medical Innovation,”
Science Studies
22, no. 2 (2009), pp. 9–30.

“The track which leads to it”
: The Reverend Robert Belaney, “Our Lady of Mentorella,”
The Ave Maria
51, no. 13 (Notre Dame, Ind., September 29, 1900).

there was a clerk “kept quite busy”
: Filippo Buonanni,
Musaeum Kircherianum, sive, Musaeum a P. Athanasio Kirchero in Collegio Romano Societatis Jesu . . .
(Rome: Georgius Plachus, 1709), p. 1.

“Father Kircher's Cabinet”
: Maximilien Misson,
A New Voyage to Italy: With Curious Observations on Several Other Countries . . .
(London: R. Bonwicke, J. Tonson, et al., 1714 [1695]), vol. 2, p. 172.

Chapter 22. Closest of All to the Truth

“what the modern world's about”
: David Foster Wallace,
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), pp. 107–109.

“I hope to show—as it were, by my example”
: In Casper Hakfoort, “Newton's Optics: The Changing Spectrum of Science,” in John Fauvel et al., eds.,
Let Newton Be!
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 86.

“who find out, settle & do”
: In James Gleick,
Isaac Newton
(New York: Pantheon, 2003), p. 127.

upholster much of what he owned in crimson
: See ibid., pp. 231–232, n. 10.

“given the length of the space continuously”
: In John Stillwell,
Mathematics and Its History
(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989), p. 278.

“began to think of gravity”
: In the introduction to John Fauvel et al., eds.,
Let Newton Be!
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 14.

“ground and polished glasses”
: In Paula Findlen, “The Janus Faces of Science in the Seventeenth Century: Athanasius Kircher and Isaac Newton,” in Margaret J. Osler, ed.,
Rethinking the Scientific Revolution
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 230.

correspondence between the colors of the spectrum
: Penelope Gouk, “The Harmonic Roots of Newtonian Science,” in John Fauvel et al., eds.,
Let Newton Be!
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 118.

Years later, Voltaire heard
: Bach, “Athanasius Kircher and His Method,” p. 91, n. 47. See also Findlen, “The Janus Faces of Science,” p. 227.

“the peerless alchemist of Europe”
: Gleick,
Isaac Newton
, p. 99.

“The Fire scarcely going out either Night or Day”
: In Gleick,
Isaac Newton
, p. 219, n. 6.

more than a million words on alchemy
: R. S. Westfall, “Newton and Alchemy,” in Brian Vickers, ed.,
Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 321.

Newton and Hermes Trismegistus
: Lawrence M. Principe, “The Alchemies of Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton: Alternate Approaches and Divergent Deployments,” in Margaret J. Osler, ed.,
Rethinking the Scientific Revolution
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 212–213.

“penetrates every solid thing”
: In Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs,
The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 274.

“active principle”
: Ibid., p. 209.

“vulgar” or “brute” . . . “propensity to associate”
: Isaac Newton, Two incomplete treatises on the vegetative growth of metals and minerals, 1670–1675, NMAHRB Ms. 1031 B, Dibner Library, Smithsonian Institution, online via The Newton Project, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk, at The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/index.jsp.

“This & only this”
: In Dobbs,
Janus Faces of Genius
, p. 24. See Findlen, “The Janus Faces of Science,” p. 234.

“Whether by any Magnetick or whatother Tye”
: In Bennett, “Cosmology and the Magnetical Philosophy,” p. 172.

“concerning the inflection of a direct motion”
: Ibid., p. 173.

“I have not been able to discover the cause”
: In John Henry, “Newton, Matter, and Magic,” in John Fauvel et al., eds.,
Let Newton Be!
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 141.

“For many things lead me”
: Isaac Newton,
The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy: A New Translation
, trans. I. B. Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 382.

“occult quality” . . . “a supernatural thing”
: In Alexandre Koyré,
From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), pp. 268, 253.

“explained mathematically and mechanically”
: Franklin Perkins,
Leibniz: A Guide for the Perplexed
(London and New York: Continuum, 2007), p. 74.

“invisible, intangible” . . . “must be a perpetual
Miracle
”
: In Koyré,
From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe
, p. 268.

“Surely it is no coincidence”
: Findlen, “The Janus Faces of Science,” p. 234.

“In my opinion the Egyptian system”
: Ádám Ferencz Kollár,
Ad Petri Lambecii Commentariorum de Augusta Bibliotheca Caes. Vindobonensi Libros VIII. Supplementorum Liber Primus Supplementorum Posthumus
(Vienna: Johann Thomas Edler von Trattern, 1790), p. 357, in Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 1.

Chapter 23. The Strangest Development

Kircher “had not even dreamed”
: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Philosophical Papers and Letters
, ed. and trans. Leroy E. Loemker (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 1989 [1956]), p. 352.

“He understands nothing”
: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese
(1716), in Leibniz,
Writings on China
, ed. and trans. Daniel J. Cook and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (Chicago: Open Court, 1994), p. 133. See Findlen,
Athanasius Kircher
, p. 6.

Leibniz and the
I Ching
: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire
, 1703. See Eco,
Search for the Perfect Language
, pp. 284–287; Umberto Eco,
Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
, trans. William Weaver (New York: Harvest, 1999), pp. 69–73.

unlock the secret of the Egyptian hieroglyphic system . . . by studying Chinese
: Don Cameron Allen, “The Predecessors of Champollion,”
Proceedings of the American Philosophers Society
104 (1960), pp. 533–547.

“the obelisks were seen to enshrine”
: Godwin,
Athanasius Kircher
, p. 6.

William Butler Yeats: See Neil Mann, “W. B. Yeats and the Vegetable Phoenix,” in Warwick Gould, ed.,
Influence and Confluence: Yeats Annual, No. 17
(Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 3–35.

She even quoted Rabbi Barachias Nephi
: H. P. Blavatsky,
The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy
(New York: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1888), p. 362. Mentioned in Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 64.

a “monk” who “appeared among the mystics”
:
H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology
(New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877), vol. 1, pp. 208–209.

Animal magnetism, he wrote, acts “at a distance” . . . “communicated, propagated”
: Franz Anton Mesmer,
Mesmerism: Being the Discovery of Animal Magnetism
(1779), trans. Joseph Bouleur (Sequim, Wash.: Holmes, 2009), pp. 12, 26–27.