ABSTRACT
It is practically impossible for the contemporary historian interested in the affairs of modern science not to be slightly troubled when opening one of the large scientific folios of Father Kircher for the first time. The work is difficult to fit into the traditional academic schema and hard to understand. Traditionally historians have not seen Kircher’s works as belonging to the domain of science, and a number of modern scholars have argued that the Jesuit “is not in the proper sense a scientist.”1 Nevertheless, we should recognize that in his own time many natural philosophers from all sides closely followed Father Kircher’s publications and considered them serious works that allowed, or at least facilitated, knowledge of the world. Thus, a first question for the contemporary historian is presented: what was, or could be, “a scientist in the proper sense” in the seventeenth century?
