Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
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hold the world's knowledge in his hands and cherished it all,
publishing on every subject under the sun.
In the chaos of northern Europe shattered by religious and
military strife, Kircher led a charmed life that spanned the
Thirty Years War and the Counter-Reformation. He had not
only the intellectual capacity but also the organizing genius to
prospect a route through knowledge and its accumulation, to its
expression and distribution. Kircher wrote topics on Egyptol-
ogy, geology, medicine, mathematics, and on China. His mind
and intellectual ambition embraced so wide a landscape that he
was in demand at the courts and universities of France, Germany
and Austria, as well as at the Church in Rome.ยนยน
While volcanology was only one of the topics covered in
Mundus Subterraneus
, along with the working of the tides, the
An engraving in
Athanasius Kircher,
Mundus Subterraneus
(1665), showing
a cross-section of
volcanic channels
within the earth,
as understood in
Kircher's day.
