Introduction
The name Athanasius Kircher may not immediately ring a bell. But this 17th century German scholar and inventor fundamentally shaped modern approaches to fields as diverse as cryptography, geology and information science. Kircher was a true polymath who crossed disciplinary boundaries centuries before such an interdisciplinary approach was commonplace. His development of the imaginative "Llullistic method" to categorize and decode knowledge remains one of Kircher‘s most groundbreaking achievements. This article will journey through the fascinating life of the "Master of 100 Arts" – explaining his Llullistic system and its lasting impact on how we think about deciphering secrets of science and nature.
The makings of an omni-disciplined scholar
Athanasius Kircher was born on May 2, 1602 in the small German village of Geisa. His early life gave little indication that he would go on to become one of the most famous scholars in Europe. Yet from a young age, friends remarked on his incredible memory and zealous enthusiasm for learning new things. By 18, Kircher had already earned a reputation as an intellectual prodigy proficient in fields like mathematics, astronomy, Greek and Hebrew.
The tutelage Kircher received after entering the Jesuit order in 1618 suited the young man‘s eclectic interests perfectly…
In 1633, Kircher‘s promising career almost ended before it began. While ice skating on the Rhine river outside Avignon, France, the ice cracked severely lacerating Kircher‘s leg. The festering wounds soon morphed into gangrene, leaving the feverish scholar on death‘s door for weeks. Miraculously, Kircher recovered – later attributing his survival to divine intervention after praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary. True or not, the ordeal profoundly deepened Kircher’s religiosity and sense of intellectual purpose.
Unlocking the power of Llullistic Combinatorics
A few years after his brush with death while teaching mathematics at University of Würzburg, Kircher became enthralled by a thinking system developed in the Middle Ages…Ramon Llull‘s Ars Generalis Ultima (The Ultimate General Art). This method used combinatorics, symbolic notations and coded charts to categorize and relate all forms of knowledge.
In Llull’s mysterious wheel diagrams, concepts like goodness, greatness and eternity occupied fixed symbolic alphabet positions. By calculating alphabet transformations, Llull believed the fundamental truth of ideas could be revealed.
| A | Goodness |
|---|---|
| B | Greatness |
| C | Difference |
| D | Concordance |
| E | Contrariety |
| F | Beginning |
| G | Middle |
| H | End |
Kircher rightly recognized this proto-computation system as a powerful early framework for organizing human knowledge – what we might now call an analog database. Starting in 1663, Kircher set about expanding on Llull’s work in his own writings… coining the term “Llullistic method” to describe his idiosyncratic approach.
Unlike Llull’s theological focus, Kircher employed the method to unlock secrets of the natural world like deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics and classifying plants by their hidden virtues. Glassie describes Kircher “tirelessly playing with words and symbols, rearranging them in endless erudite patterns and tables” trying to reveal breakthroughs. Modern semiotic scholars highlight Kircher’s Llullistic method as pioneering the concept of symbolic knowledge representation – finding meaning through an encoded language of symbols.
Marvelous Inventions from the Master of 100 Arts
Beyond the realm of abstract thought, Kircher also channelled his inventiveness into creation of wondrous machines. While experimenting with anamorphic projection, Kircher effectively developed an early prototype slide projector known as the “magic lantern”. Images of skeletons and demons seemed to emerge from smoke when Kircher unveiled the glowing projection box to awed audiences…
Ever the empiricist, Kircher didn’t just speculate about acoustical theory – he built an elaborate megaphone using tubing and resonance principles to amplify voices across rivers and plazas. When testing principles of optics and celestial measurement, Kircher engineered a giant sundial onto a Roman cathedral facade. It all represented a pragmatic and energetic approach towards scientific inquiry centuries ahead of its time…
Lasting Legacy of a Titan of Polymathy
Even as he entered his mid 60s, Kircher‘s scholarly output showed no signs of slowing. His 1664 masterwork Mundus Subterraneus (Subterranean World) drew on exhaustive research of alpine caves, volcanos and subterranean fires – as well as Llullistic diagrams of the earth‘s hidden structural logic. Bones sent to Kircher for examination ended up displayed in wondrous cabinets alongside mythic unicorn horns and magic amulets.
Athanasius Kircher finally passed away in 1680 at the age of 78, leaving behind an incredible legacy. In sheer volume alone, Kircher’s 40 published books and countless inventions put him in a league of his own. Today he is hailed as the "Master of 100 Arts" and the last great polymath of the Renaissance era.
While aspects of Kircher‘s eclectic writings rightly drew skepticism, his development of the diverse Llullistic system endures as one of his most prescient feats. Modern figures from Einstein to Borges have praised the inventiveness and ambition of Kircher’s method for organizing knowledge. In many ways, today’s labyrinthine digital databases working to structure the world’s information descend directly from the philosophical datastore Kircher himself pioneered centuries ago.
