Inspiration for generalists

It is difficult to accurately summarize the breadth of activities explored and mastered by the 17th century Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. Inventor, composer, geographer, geologist, Egyptologist, historian, adventurer, philosopher, proprietor of one of the first public museums, physicist, mathematician, naturalist, astronomer, archaeologist, author of more than 40 published works: Kircher was one of the preeminent European intellectuals of the Seventeenth century. A contemporary of Newton, Boyle, Leibniz and Descartes, Kircher’s rightful place in the history of science has been shrouded by his attempt to forge a unified world view out of traditional Biblical historicism and the emerging secular scientific theory of knowledge.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology

If I’ve ever been tempted to criticize the academy in favor of ostensibly more productive vocations, Kircher’s life gives me pause. Was there any path available to becoming such an extraordinary polymath, aside from wealth, outside of teaching and the priesthood? Anyway, Kircher might end up a sort of hero for me. History-blind and context-averse criticisms that he tried to unify his Catholicism with science rather misses the point that he was a priest attempting to validate science. We could use more of those even today, and less of the correlated worship of scientism. Kircher, as the father of Egyptology, was criticized for misinterpreting hieroglyphics, which critique is nothing if not a wholesale rejection of the scientific method. And Descartes’ dismissal of Kircher as “more quacksalver than savant” is rich coming from a man whose theory of knowledge was little more complex than “I feel strongly that it’s true, so it’s true.” Though the word “quacksalver” has some potential for daily use.

But the real point is Kircher’s generalism, the sheer outrageousness of the breadth and depth of his interests and pursuits. In an age where the value of a man lies in his efficiency at bolting one sub-widget onto another sub-widget, one’s contribution to human knowledge (or even to enriching one’s family) seems to consist mostly of posting negative reviews of local taquerias. But a modern man would rather get a second job affixing other sub-widgets than learn how to make a better tortilla himself.

Not so for Athanasius Kircher, who would exhaust his capacity to plumb any depths worth plumbing. How Kircher never made it into Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle is a mystery to me.