Subjectorum Univerſalium cum principiis abſolutis

The Cartesian product of universal subjects and absolute principles, from Athanasius Kircher's Ars Magna Sciendi, 1669.

[via BibliOdyssey, via KrazyDad]

Update (10/19): See also College Majors in the US, from the always lovely Indexed.

Comments

[John the Statistician]

Old school!

[D. Eppstein]

Complete bipartite graphs, 67 years before Euler invented graph theory.

[Jonathan Vos Post]

1236: Birth of Ramon Lully, Philosopher of Majorca, in Palma, SPAIN, inventor of the first digital word-processing device (satirized in "Gulliver's Travels"), and discoverer of the gas Ammonia...

But getting back to the threaded dude:

http://www.strangescience.net/kircher.htm

In May 2002, a group of distinguished scholars, writers and historians gathered at the New York Institute of the Humanities to address a burning question: "Was Athanasius Kircher the coolest guy ever, or what?" If the 17th-century German Jesuit polymath himself had been in attendance, he likely would have answered in the affirmative. Modest he was not, but if Benjamin Franklin's observation that vanity is one of life's great comforts is true, then Kircher was almost always in a good mood.

Scholars who preceded Kircher were happy to limit their writings on volcanoes to repeating the views of Greek and Roman scholars. Kircher, in stark contrast, descended into the smoking craters of Etna and Vesuvius. Maybe part of the reason he was willing to risk his life for a closer look at a volcano was that he had survived so many dangers unscathed. He had lived through shipwrecks, escaped the plague, narrowly avoided trampling by horses, even survived an accidental trip through the grinding wheel of a mill. Most foolhardy of all, he had refused to disguise himself in "worldly" clothes while traveling through Germany during the Thirty Years War. His Jesuit robes attracted the unwelcome attention of some Protestant soldiers who nearly hanged him from a tree until one of them, moved by his courage, had a change of heart.
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