A Man of Misconceptions by John Glassie

[Betty]

A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change speaks of the scientific progress of the Renaissance. What was accepted as truth varied. Religious authorities corroborated beliefs with Aristotle's system while other observers aided by technological instruments saw a different, imperfect universe. This biographer's subject is the curious "Jesuit scientist" Athanasius Kircher. His curiosity gave him a glimpse inside of flaming, sputtering Mount Vesuvius after earthquakes and eruptions hit the southern Italian/Sicilian regions, causing him to wonder whether the earth underground was connected throughout in a "geocosm". Kircher did hold some outdated explanations, such as spontaneous generation. Kircher's doings in the seventeenth century maintain high interest.

[Betty]

The subject of the biography, Kircher, lived during the heyday of the scientific revolution, which Wikipedia dates from 1543 to 1687. His inquiry into all matters of creation and nature accommodated the observation and experiment of science, yet as a person of faith may not have applied those principles of inquiry as rigorously as other scientists applied them. His conclusions were therefore controverted by more objective experimenters. Nevertheless, his inquiries and interpretations put all topics about the nature of the universe on the table for scientific debate.

[Betty]

Having read this biography, I have come away with a greater sense of the Renaissance polymath Kircher and of his dynamic seventeenth-century Europe. The ending leaves open whether future scientists will find truth in Kircher's findings and whether our current beliefs will one be regarded as strange or misguided.