>I think I see where this Kicher business is headed, which is the
>search for a single unifying principle which he identified as God.
Just to back up a little though, I introduced this here in response to Carrol talking about how until the early 17th century it was possible to read everything. With regard to that, here's the money shot from the review I pointed to:
'Yet, even if Kircher manifestly did not "know everything," there is also no doubt that in the 17th century it was possible for an intellectually ambitious scholar, such as Kircher, to achieve a more approximate pretension to universal knowledge than would be plausible in any of the centuries since."