ATHANASIUS KIRCHER SOCIETY

Have you ever heard of this guy???????????? Me either, but he's quite the "renaissance man". Check him out!!!!!!!!!!!!................PEACE..................Scott

ATHANASIUS KIRCHER SOCIETY - The Athanasius Kircher Society was
chartered to perpetuate the sensibilities and pursuits of the late
Athanasius Kircher, SJ. Our interests extend to the wondrous, the
singular, the esoteric, the obsessive, the arcane, and the sometimes
hazy frontier between the plausible and the implausible — anything that
Kircher might find cool if he were alive today. Records of our
proceedings are maintained for the public’s edification.

http://www.kirchersociety.org

SCOTT MCLEMEE, CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 20002 - This month marks
the 400th birthday of the Jesuit polymath -- who, by the time he died in
1680, had published enough encyclopedic works to fill a small library.
But now -- unlike in previous centuries, when his worldwide reputation
declined sharply, his name becoming something of a joke to the few who
remembered him -- Kircher's astounding career is being celebrated in
suitably awestruck terms. Last Thursday, at a symposium at New York
University sponsored by the New York Institute for the Humanities,
experts gathered to ponder a burning question previous generations of
cultural historians have neglected to confront: "Was Athanasius Kircher
Just About the Coolest Guy Ever, or What?"

The consensus is unambiguous: Athanasius Kircher was, indeed, very cool.
A dude of wonders, even. Even a partial catalog of Kircher's
accomplishments tends to make one's jaw drop. A German-born Jesuit
priest, he served as a professor of mathematics at the Jesuit training
institute in Rome. Nicknamed "the master of a hundred arts," Kircher
also knew dozens of languages, including Chinese and Coptic. His
scientific writings -- studied with rapt interest by scholars (Roman
Catholic and otherwise) around the world -- included works on acoustics,
astronomy, chemistry, mineralogy, and optics. He also published some of
the earliest scholarship on ancient Egypt. His theories about the
hieroglyphics turned out to be wrong, for the most part; but Kircher had
enough insights and suggestive ideas to make him a recognized pioneer.

And for almost a century after his death, no learned traveler would
consider his or her trip to Rome complete without a tour of Father
Kircher's museum: a collection of ancient artifacts and stuffed beasts
(including such exotic creatures as the aardvark) as well as the
master's own inventions. There was, for example, a statue whose eyes and
lips began to move in an uncannily lifelike way as it addressed
visitors, who were momentarily startled out of their wits. (A concealed
assistant operated the proto-robot.)

Not merely erudite, Kircher was also a sort of intellectual daredevil.
He entered the mouth of an active volcano, and published a vivid account
of what he saw: "The whole area was lit up by the fires, and the glowing
sulphur and bitumen produced an intolerable vapor. It was just like
hell, only lacking the demons to complete the picture." Examining the
blood of plague victims with a microscope, Kircher developed what must
have seemed, at the time, like a bizarre theory: Disease might be caused
by very tiny organisms entering the body from the outside. And while
Kircher was the most respected intellectual in his church, with the full
backing of the Pope, some of his intellectual explorations tested the
very limits of acceptable thought. His cosmological theories, for
example, appeared suspiciously compatible with the ideas of Copernicus
and Galileo. The Inquisition prepared an internal document listing the
worrisome passages, just in case.

http://chronicle.com/free/2002/05/2002052804n.htm

[Here is a typical product of the Kircher Society's work]

VISIONARY ARCHITECTURE WEEK: Architecture of the Arctic To wrap up
visionary architecture week, we wanted to spotlight the buildings of the
Canadian territory of Nunavut, where high winds, freezing temperatures,
and the difficulty of transporting raw materials pose some interesting
architectural constraints. All of the buildings below are in the city of
Iqaluit, except for the flying saucer, which is in Igloolik.

http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=213