Athanasius Kircher is having a very good year. This month marks the 400th birthday of the Jesuit polymath -- who, by the time he died in 1680, had published enough encyclopedic works to fill a small ...

How did a man who got so many things wrong become an intellectual celebrity in his own lifetime? In 1680, a small procession of Jesuits ascended a winding path to the mountaintop shrine of Mentorella, ...

“A sundial for sounding the hours,” from Athanasius Kircher’s Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Rome, 1646) (courtesy Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology) On Time: The Quest for Precision ...

According to the memoir of Athanasius Kircher, even the circumstances of his birth were auspicious. And in a sense they were, if you choose, as he did, to leave out the witch hunt. Kircher's mother ...

Global Baroque surveys the triumphant internationalism of a new age of vast and rapid interchanges of art and culture, with Rome at its center. Animals: Art, Science and Sound (21 April – 28 August ...

The table sits at the front of the bookshop, near the door. That way it will get maximum exposure as people come and go. "If you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code," the sign over it says, "you might also like ...