Jesuit science and the end of nature's secrets

225 Pages·2015·3.49 MB·English

by  Waddell

Jesuit science and the
end of nature’s secrets
For Maggie
Jesuit science and the
end of nature’s secrets
Mark a. Waddell
Michigan State University, USA
© Mark a. Waddell 2015
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Mark a. Waddell has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work.
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 The Crisis of Certainty 17
2 Building a Better Ontology 29
3 The Demise of Occult Qualities 53
4 Spectacle, Uncertainty, and the Fallibility of the Eye 87
5 Probabilism, or the World as it Might Be 119
6 The Culture of Marvels, Exposed 161
Conclusion 187
Bibliography 193
Index 211
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Figures
3.1a An illustration found in the Philosophia magnetica, depicting an
abstract representation of the magnetic force. 80
3.1b Another illustration from the Philosophia magnetica. Here,
Cabeo has reproduced the appearance of iron filings affected by
the lodestone’s invisible power. 80
4.1 Athanasius Kircher at the age of 76. 88
4.2 Kircher’s sunflower clock, labeled as “the marriage of art and
nature,” from his Magnes; sive, De arte magnetica. 90
4.3 Kircher’s magnetic anemoscope that he constructed on Malta,
from his Magnes; sive, De arte magnetica. 99
4.4 The Kircherian museum, from the frontispiece to Giorgio de
Sepi’s Romani Collegii Societatis Jesu Musaeum Celeberrimum
(1678). 105
4.5 The magnetic planetarium of Archimedes, from the Magnes;
sive, De arte magnetica. 108
4.6 The theatrum catoptricum, which Kircher used to instruct
visitors in the nature of infinity. 112
5.1 The Hapsburg-themed frontispiece of the Magnes; sive, De arte
magnetica, 2nd ed. (1643). 130
5.2 “All things rest connected by secret knots”: an emblematic
schema representing the connective power of Kircher’s unseen
correspondences. 132
5.3 The frontispiece to the Ars magna lucis et umbrae, showing the
four sources of illumination: sacred authority, reason, profane
authority, and the senses. 140
5.4 A speculative vision of the interior of the Earth, from the
Mundus subterraneus. 157
viii Jesuit Science and the End of Nature’s Secrets
6.1 Various depictions of telescopes and similar devices, from
Volume I of the Magia universalis. 170
6.2 The frontispiece to the Magia universalis. 172
6.3 Asinorum musica, or Schott’s donkey choir; below, the feline
harpsichord attributed to Kircher. 174
6.4 Schott’s depiction of the Magdeburg pneumatic experiment,
from his Technica curiosa. 181
Acknowledgements
This project has been more than a decade in the making, which means I have a
lot of people to acknowledge.
Many years ago, at the University of Calgary, I wrote a fateful essay for a class
taught by Maggie Osler. As it happened, that class—and that essay—changed
my life. Maggie became a mentor, and then a friend. She refused to accept
anything but my best effort, and as I ventured off into the wilds of academe
she was both my biggest supporter and my most incisive critic. I will always be
grateful to her, as well as tremendously saddened that she did not live to see
this book appear in print.
Larry Principe continued the work that Maggie started, and his encyclopedic
knowledge, inexhaustible patience, and dry wit remain as valuable now as when
I was his student at Johns Hopkins. I have learned a great deal from him, and his
example continues to inspire me.
Research for this book has benefited from the support offered by
several institutions, including a Smithsonian Institution Graduate Student
Fellowship, a Roy G. Neville Fellowship awarded by the Chemical Heritage
Foundation, and the Charles S. Singleton Fellowship awarded by the Johns
Hopkins University. I also want to thank the Folger Institute, and Jim Bono,
for the “Imagining Nature” colloquium that took place in 2003–2004, where I
found the opportunity to present the first seeds of this book to an enthusiastic
and welcoming group of fellow scholars.
The many, many iterations of this project have been reviewed more often
than I would like to remember. Not all of the anonymous reviewers were kind,
but all of them were useful in one way or another, so they have my thanks. My
particular gratitude goes to Audra Wolfe, for her insightful editorial help, and
to Mark Largent and Liam Brockey, who both provided valuable feedback on
this manuscript.
I would not have persevered in this process, nor survived those many reviews,
without the support of a great many friends and colleagues, including Michael
Austin, Jeff Bale, Jen Baggot, Kendra and Jubin Cheruvelil, Jeremy Herliczek,
Allison Kavey, Susan Lamb, Tulley Long, Georgina Montgomery, Cheryl