ABSTRACT

Modern science is full of organizations, ranging from professional groups covering a single nation and discipline like the American Physics Association to elite interdisciplinary groups like Britain's Royal Society. Jesuits were less rooted in a particular discipline than other early modern scientists because it was the usual practice of Jesuit schools to rotate professors through the disciplines. Athanasius Kircher, the leading Jesuit scientist and collector of antiquities and other curiosities in the middle of the seventeenth century, was as fascinated by stones formed in the shape of the cross or of various religious symbols and personalities as he was by the properties of magnets. Science played a central role in the Jesuit missionary effort in China. Christianity could not be imposed by force upon the vast, vigorous, and wealthy Chinese Empire. The Kangxi Emperor had a particular interest in mathematics, in which he had been tutored by Jesuits early in his reign.