Athanasius Kircher: the 17th Century Science at the Crossroads

Athanasius Kircher, who entered the Society of Jesus in 1628, is a peculiar scientist who is in love with everything he sees and with everything he thinks he sees. He is a non-Galilean scientist whose general attitude is not obscurantism but rather a defense of established faith. He arrives in Rome in the fall of 1633 when he is in his thirties. Even if at the epoch Kircher has already written some of his many books, it is amazing that Galileo does not even quote him in the letters he will wrote in the rest of his life. In spite of having stridden along a minor scientific path, opposite of that shown by Galileo, it is nonetheless surprising to find out that Athanasius Kircher was gifted with remarkable intuition, and was in some cases even decades in advance with respect to the age he lived in.