\subsection{Athanasius Kircher}
 
Father Athanasius Kircher (1601\EnDash{}1680) was a Jesuit priest, German linguist, ancient historian, mathematician, vulcanologist, physicist, theologian, inventor and music theorist (to name only a few), active mainly in Rome. He has been called 'the last man to know everything'. His encyclopedic works invited his readers to explore the connections among virtually every imaginable form of knowledge. ``His books offered choice passages of forgotten texts to his readers in large folio volumes, dense with the fonts of many languages and laden with the promise of more knowledge yet to come. The fact that he was unable\EmDash{}or perhaps unwilling\EmDash{}to release all of his books and editions of the wisdom of the ages into print made him all the more interesting and enigmatic.''\footnote{Findlen, 3\EnDash{}4}

Kircher is a complex man to assess. He correctly determined that the Coptic language was descended from the language of ancient Egypt; yet his ``translations'' of the hieroglyphs were pure figments of his imagination. He had the prestige and connections to build a global network of Jesuits and non-Catholic men of letters to compile the first table of magnetic declination (the amount that true north differs from magnetic north, which varies by region of the world\EmDash{}something very useful for navigation).[Findlen, 21] Yet, presenting himself as an expert in decrypting codes, he was completely unable to decipher a simple case of 'mirror writing' presented to him by his friends. In his lifetime he was equally venerated and vilified.
According to his autobiography\footnote{Kircher, 1684}, Kircher was:

\begin{itemize}
\item	Almost drowned in a pond as a child.
\item	Almost hung by Protestants, but because of his piety they gave him money, returned his possessions and let him go.
\item	On another occasion, to escape the Protestants, he struggled through deep snow, ill-clad and penniless, begging for food for three days.
\item	Almost died from a leg infection but was cured after praying to the Virgin Mary.
\item	At a horse race he was accidentally pushed into their path, but crouched motionless and emerged unscathed.
\item	While crossing a river in winter, the ice he was on broke away and he floated downstream. He then swam to shore through the icy water and walked 3 miles through the snow to safety \footnote{Godwin, 10}.
\end{itemize}

He failed his first application to the Jesuit College in Mainz, and was admitted as a novice to the College at Paderborn in 1618. Due to misplaced humility he disguised the fact that his intelligence was far above that of his fellows, but eventually he came to his senses.\footnote{Godwin, 10}

In 1624 he taught mathematics, Hebrew and Syrian at Heiligenstadt-at the tender age of 23. During this time he published his first book, Ars Magnesia (1631) -his researches on magnetism. That same year once again the invasion of Protestant troops forced him to flee-this time leaving behind all of his manuscripts.\footnote{Godwin, 11}

Obviously Protestant Germany was a bad place for a bright Jesuit priest to be in those days, so Kircher's superiors allowed him to go to France. He ended up in Avignon around 1631, where once again he nearly got himself killed\EmDash{}this time when he was caught in a water-wheel which he had investigated a little too closely. Meanwhile, his teaching and studies continued happily until 1633, when he was summoned to Vienna to succeed the astronomer Johannes Kepler (d. 1631) as Mathematician to the Habsburg Court. \footnote{Godwin, 11}

Since Germany was still dangerous for Jesuits, Kircher took a route through northern Italy. He embarked with some other brothers of his order, and on the first stage of their journey from Avignon to Marseilles they all became ill. So the captain landed them on an island to recuperate-and promptly sailed away with all their possessions. They managed to hail some fishermen who took them to Marseilles, whence they sailed for Genoa in a more respectable ship. After two violent storms\EmDash{}in one of them the captain avoided shipwreck by guiding his ship into a narrow cavern-they at last reached Genoa. After two weeks Kircher continued his journey, and yet another storm drove the ship far past its intended destination\EmDash{}to Civitavecchia, the main port of Rome. Obviously Kircher could not miss the chance of seeing the Eternal City, so he set out on foot for the forty-mile pilgrimage. On reaching Rome in 1635 he found that he was expected! Friends and patrons had succeeded in having his orders changed, and he was to stay at the Roman College, the hub of the whole Jesuit Order, with a special commission to study Egyptian Hieroglyphs.\footnote{Godwin, 11} Kircher arrived in Rome shortly after Galileo had been placed under house arrest\EmDash{}Kircher steered clear of open participation in the Copernican controversy.\footnote{Findlen, 21}

In 1636 Friedrich, Landgraf of Hesse-Darmstadt, the ruler of Kircher's home state, converted to Catholicism, largely through Kircher's efforts. He was received into the Church with great solemnity in Rome, and soon made Cardinal. Wishing to travel in Italy, he selected Kircher as his traveling companion. The party traveled south to Sicily and touched at Malta-everywhere Kircher took the opportunity to explore natural science: mirages, zoology, volcanism, and much more. When they reached Naples, Vesuvius threatened to erupt (the same volcano that we saw claimed Pliny the Elder a millennium and a half earlier), and Kircher climbed to the top of the volcano and had himself lowered into the crater to observe it more closely.\footnote{Godwin, 13}

That was his last adventure. He was made professor of Mathematics at the Roman College, a post that he held for eight years, after which he was completely relieved of his teaching duties so he could devote himself to study. Now he began to publish his major works, apparently concentrating on a different subject every three or four years. His reputation brought him scholars, letters and specimens from all over the world, and he amassed a vast collection of artifacts, curiosities of natural history, and scientific apparatus. Before his death, in fact, a large hall was provided to house the 'Museo Kircheriano', which was one of the world's first museums.\footnote{Godwin, 13}

By 1678, suffering the ailments of old age, he mainly occupied himself with spiritual exercises. He died in 1680.\footnote{Godwin, 14}

One of Kircher's 40 or so books was the \Title{Phonurgia Nova} (1673)\footnote{Kircher}, devoted to acoustics, and containing all the then-known mathematics and physics concerning sound. It also includes his invention of the megaphone, as well as two experiments involving the 'wet-finger-around-the-wine-glass'.

In the first experiment, Kircher writes: \footnote{Kircher, 1673, 188-9}

\begin{quote}
Take a glass drinking vessel of any size whatever, which you are to fill with pure clear water. If, after doing this, you wet your index finger and rub the outer lip of the vessel in a circular movement for some time, you will after some time perceive an extraordinary sort of sound resembling ringing metal; when the water is stirred by this it will be so forcefully rippled that it appears to be set in motion by some wind. 
\end{quote}

Thus far, Kircher is correct. He continues…

\begin{quote}
If you fill this vessel only half-full, you will still perceive a sound, but pitched twice as high as the previous one, so that this sound will re-echo the earlier one at the perfect interval of an octave, and as a result you will observe that the rippling of the water is also more agitated\ldots
\end{quote}

Here Kircher is wrong, as the reader can verify for themselves in their own kitchen with a wineglass. The range of a wineglass from empty to as-full-as-possible-yet-the-glass-can-still-sing is about a major third ('do' to 'mi' in 'do re mi')\EmDash{}far short of the 'octave' that Kircher claims.

\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=40mm, bb=0 0 40mm 28mm]{kircher001.jpg}
\caption[Kircher Experiment]{Kircher Experiment}
\label{Kircher Experiment}
\end{figure}

His other experiment involved five wine glasses:

\begin{quote}
Let five drinking vessels of glass be taken, all of the same size and capacity, which you are to arrange so that they touch each other in the way which is portrayed here in the diagram below. Furthermore let one vessel be filled with aqua vitae (an aqueous solution of alcohol), a second with wine of the better sort, another with distilled water, another with a coarse liquid, such as sea water or olive-oil, and the central one with normal fresh water. Having done this you are to moisten a finger-tip and rub it continually on the lip of the vessel until you perceive the ringing noise which we showed you how to produce in the first experiment.
 For this very high pitched sound will to your amazement stir all the remaining liquids into motion, and the more violently the more one liquid surpasses another in fineness (subtlety). As a consequence the ethanol, true to its fiery or choleric nature, will leap up in the vessel more than the others; but the wine, true to its sanguine or airy nature, will undergo only a moderate agitation in its vessel. Furthermore the distilled water, which exhibits a phlegmatic constitution, will give rise to a movement that is slower and more sluggish than the others, but the coarse water contained in its vessel will, on account of its earthy make-up, be scarcely capable of any motion. One should conclude that music stirs emotions in our minds in the same manner\ldots
\end{quote}

% ??? FIGURE
No woodcut accompanies the first experiment (nor is one really needed), but the woodcut of the other clearly shows glasses with stems-a requirement for a musical glass. No mention here of different levels in the five glasses to achieve different pitches. Furthermore, the author has tried Kircher's experiment: 

\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
\hline
For:&the author used:\\
\hline
'aqua vitae' (an aqueous solution of alcohol)&Vodka\\
'wine of the better sort'&a nice merlot from 1998\\
'distilled water'&distilled water\\
'a coarse liquid, such as sea water or olive-oil'&olive oil\\
'the central one with normal fresh water'&tap water\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

The author simply couldn't get the results Kircher described: [???] 

Based on what we now understand about the physics of acoustic resonance, Kircher's experiment is much more likely to succeed if the glasses are tuned to each other (something that Kircher doesn't specify). So the author tuned the glasses to each other and repeated the experiment [???] 

The author concluded his attempt at recreating Kircher's experiment by toasting him with the glass of merlot. (The glass of vodka was appropriately disposed of as well.)
Thus Kircher's two 'experiments' with wineglasses are both problematic, particularly the second\EmDash{}did he actually perform them?


