Jesuit Science and the End of Nature’s Secrets
3.1a An illustration found in the Philosophia magnetica, depicting an abstract representation of the magnetic force.
3.1b Another illustration from the Philosophia magnetica. Here, Cabeo has reproduced the appearance of iron filings affected by the lodestone’s invisible power.
4.1 Athanasius Kircher at the age of 76.
4.2 Kircher’s sunflower clock, labeled as “the marriage of art and nature,” from his Magnes; sive, De arte magnetica.
4.3 Kircher’s magnetic anemoscope that he constructed on Malta, from his Magnes; sive, De arte magnetica.
4.4 The Kircherian museum, from the frontispiece to Giorgio de Sepi’s Romani Collegii Societatis Jesu Musaeum Celeberrimum (1678).
4.5 The magnetic planetarium of Archimedes, from the Magnes; sive, De arte magnetica.
4.6 The theatrum catoptricum, which Kircher used to instruct visitors in the nature of infinity.
5.1 The Hapsburg-themed frontispiece of the Magnes; sive, De arte magnetica, 2nd ed. (1643).
5.2 “All things rest connected by secret knots”: an emblematic schema representing the connective power of Kircher’s unseen correspondences.
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.
5.4 A speculative vision of the interior of the Earth, from the Mundus subterraneus.
6.1 Various depictions of telescopes and similar devices, from Volume I of the Magia universalis.
6.2 The frontispiece to the Magia universalis.
6.3 Asinorum musica, or Schott’s donkey choir; below, the feline harpsichord attributed to Kircher.
6.4 Schott’s depiction of the Magdeburg pneumatic experiment, from his Technica curiosa.