A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change by John Glassie (Author). That is the vivid, unconventional story of Athanasius Kircher, the legendary seventeenth-century priest-scientist who was either an excellent genius or a colossal crackpot . . . or a bit of both.
Kircher’s interests knew no bounds. From optics to music to magnetism to medicine, he provided up inventions and theories for every part, and they made him famous across Europe. His celebrated museum in Rome featured magic lanterns, talking statues, the tail of a mermaid, and a brick from the Tower of Babel. Holy Roman Emperors were his patrons, popes had been his buddies, and in his spare time he collaborated with the Baroque grasp Bernini.
But Kircher lived throughout an era of radical transformation, through which the previous method to data-what he known as the “art of understanding”-was giving option to the scientific methodology and trendy thought. A Man of Misconceptions traces the rise, success, and eventual fall of this fascinating character as he attempted to return to phrases with a changing world.
With humor and perception, John Glassie returns Kircher to his rightful place as one in every of history’s most unforgettable figures.
Glassie does a tremendous job presenting a really entertaining figure in opposition to the backdrop of the period that made him who he was. The guide comprises many fascinating stories of Kircher's attempt to know everything. I also was not very accustomed to the period he lived (Central Europe and Italy through the Thirty Years Struggle and Holy Roman Empire), a time of great upheaval and fascinating characters.
That is the most effective single ebook out there on Athanasius Kircher, probably the most interesting figures within the historical past of science. Kircher has been the main focus of many scholarly books and articles, but Glassie presents something new, a coherent portrait of Kircher as a scholar and thinker within the seventeenth-century world of the Counter Reformation that is intelligible to the lay reader but in addition does justice to his subject. His style is lively, and the guide reads fairly well. I would like to assume that I know something about Kircher, however I realized much from this book.
A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change
John Glassie (Author)
352 pages
Riverhead Hardcover (November 8, 2012)
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