Athanasius Kircher

Kircher, Phonurgia nova, 1673. View online.

Athanasius Kircher (1601/02 – 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar.

Works

(in Latin unless noted)

• Ars Magnesia, 1631, Gallica.
• Lingua aegyptiaca restituta, 1644, RBR.
• Ars magna lucis et vmbrae in decem libros digesta, 1646, RBR.
• Musurgia vniuersalis, 1650, RBR.
• Obeliscvs pamphilivs, 1650, RBR, IA
• Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 3 vols., 1652-54, MPIWG, Google, vol 1, Google, vol 2, Google, vol 3.
• Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiosae luis, 1658, HUL.
• Iter extaticum coeleste, quo mundi opificium, 1660, RBR.
• Diatribe de prodigiosis crucibus, 1661, RBR.
• Polygraphia, 1663, RBR.
• Mundus subterraneus, 1665, UOL.
• Obelisci Aegyptiaci, 1666, RBR.
• Phonurgia nova, sive conjugium mechanico-physicum artis & natvrae paranympha phonosophia concinnatum, Kempten: Rudolph Dreherr, 1673, PDF, SLUB, Gallica. Early book on sound, acoustics and music; describes acoustic apparatuses and phenomena such as the tuba stentorophonica [the loud trumpet], the statua citofonica [the talking statue], or the Aeolian harp. Commentaries: [1], [2].
• Sphinx Mystagoga, 1676, WDB.

Literature

• Joscelyn Godwin, Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge, Thames & Hudson, 1979, 96 pp, Log.
• Paula Findlen (ed.), Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, Routledge, 2003, PDF.
• John Edward Fletcher, A Study of the Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher, ‘Germanus Incredibilis’: With a Selection of his Unpublished Correspondence and an Annotated Translation of his Autobiography, ed. Elizabeth Fletcher, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011, 656 pp, Log.
• Daniel Stolzenberg, Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity, University of Chicago Press, 2013, 320 pp.
• Daniel Stolzenberg, "Athanasius Kircher and the Hieroglyphic Sphinx", Public Domain Review, Sep 2014, HTML.
• Roberto Buonanno, The Stars of Galileo Galilei and the Universal Knowledge of Athanasius Kircher, Springer, 2014, PDF.