The Ecstatic Journey

The Ecstatic Journey: Athanasius Kircher in Baroque Rome surveys the scientific, religious, and political culture of seventeenth-century Rome through the works of Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), a German Jesuit at the Roman College. Published in conjunction with an exhibition held in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library, this illustrated catalog includes an essay by Ingrid D. Rowland and descriptions of over 100 works. The introduction by F. Sherwood Rowland, 1995 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, offers an appreciation of Kircher and observations on the idea of scientific progress.



"In an age of polymaths, Kircher was perhaps the most polymathic of them all."-Anthony Grafton, Princeton University (Q in NYT 5/25/02)


"[Kircher] made vomiting machines and eavesdropping statues. He transcribed bird song and wrote a book about musicology (still used today). He taught Nicholas Poussin perspective and made a chamber of mirrors to drive cats crazy. He invented the first slide projector and had himself lowered into the mouth of Mount Vesuvius just as it was supposed to erupt. He proved the impossibility of the Tower of Babel. . . .With his labyrinthine mind, he was Jorge Luis Borges before Borges."-Sarah Boxer, New York Times