Waddell Mark A
Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48824, USA.
Endeavour. 2010 Mar;34(1):30-4. doi: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2009.11.003. Epub 2010 Jan 19.
Situated at the center of intellectual life in baroque Rome, the museum administered by the Jesuit naturalist Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) simultaneously instructed and bemused its audiences with an exuberant mix of exotic animals, classical art and technological marvels. Kircher's playful use of spectacle and his irrepressible fondness for "magic" were derided by contemporaries as frivolous wonder-mongering, but the lavish machines at the heart of his museum were more than mere showpieces. Instead, they presented audiences with a compelling vision of the natural world in which the hidden foundations of the universe could be captured and displayed by artifice. Kircher's collection was in itself a vast instrument of revelation, conceived on a grander scale than the telescope of Galileo but rooted all the same in contemporary scientific culture.
这座由耶稣会博物学家阿塔纳修斯·基歇尔（1602 - 1680）管理的博物馆位于巴洛克时期罗马知识生活的中心，它用异国动物、古典艺术和科技奇迹的丰富组合，同时教育并吸引着观众。基歇尔对奇观的戏谑运用以及他对“魔法”抑制不住的喜爱，被同时代的人嘲笑为传播轻浮的奇谈怪论，但他博物馆核心的那些奢华机器可不只是展品。相反，它们向观众呈现了一个引人入胜的自然世界景象，在这个世界里，宇宙隐藏的基础可以通过技艺被捕捉和展示出来。基歇尔的藏品本身就是一个巨大的揭示工具，其构思规模比伽利略的望远镜更为宏大，但同样扎根于当代科学文化。
