>both the specificity and volume of intellectual output has grown with such
>prodigity that one can't know everything
The Museum of Jurassic Technology has a permanent exhibit devoted to Athanasius Kircher, who is the subject of a book called "Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything":
http://museumjt.stores.yahoo.net/atkilamanwho.html
A collection of 17 essays on Athanasius Kircher by leading Kircher scholars. Includes Michael John Gorman on Kircher's Magnetic Geography, Stephen Jay Gould on understanding Kircher's Paleontology, and Ingrid Rowland on Kircher, Bruno, and the Panspermia of the Infinite Universe.
Routledge, 2004, paperback, 465 pages
http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/kircher.html
It is difficult to accurately summarize the breadth of activities explored and mastered by the 17th century Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. Inventor, composer, geographer, geologist, Egyptologist, historian, adventurer, philosopher, proprietor of one of the first public museums, physicist, mathematician, naturalist, astronomer, archaeologist, author of more than 40 published works: Kircher was one of the preeminent European intellectuals of the Seventeenth century. A contemporary of Newton, Boyle, Leibniz and Descartes, Kircher's rightful place in the history of science has been shrouded by his attempt to forge a unified world view out of traditional Biblical historicism and the emerging secular scientific theory of knowledge.