Electronic edition published by Cultural Heritage Langauge Technologies (with permission from Charles Scribners and Sons) and funded by the National Science Foundation International Digital Libraries Program. This text has been proofread to a low degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using data entry.
SCHOTT, GASPAR (b. Königshofen, near Würzburg,
Germany, 5 February 1608; d. Würzburg,
22 May 1666), mathematics, physics, technology.
Apart from the place and date of his birth, nothing
is known of Schott's origins; almost the only
childhood recollection in his works is of a suction
pump bursting at Paderborn in 1620, which suggests
an early interest in machinery. In 1627 he
entered the Society of Jesus and was sent to
Würzburg University, where he studied philosophy
under Athanasius Kircher. The Swedish invasion
of the Palatinate in 1631 forced teacher and pupils
to flee. Schott may have first accompanied Kircher
to France, for he mentions his travels in that country;
but he certainly completed his studies in theology,
philosophy, and mathematics at Palermo. He
remained in Sicily for twenty years, mostly teaching
at Palermo, although he spent two years at Trapani.
Nevertheless he was anxious to satisfy a
strong thirst for knowledge and to resume his
connection with Kircher, whom he always revered
as his master. Schott was able to satisfy his desire
in 1652, when he was sent to Rome, where for
three years he collaborated with Kircher on his
researches. Schott decided that since Kircher did
not have time to publish all that he knew and all
the information communicated to him by Jesuits
abroad, he himself would do so. While compiling
this material, he returned to Germany in the summer
of 1655, first to Mainz and then to Würzburg,
where he taught mathematics and physics.
Schott first published what had originally been
intended as a brief guide to the hydraulic and pneumatic
instruments in Kircher's Roman museum,
expanding it into the first version of his Mechanica
hydraulico-pneumatica. But he added as an appendix
a detailed account of Guericke's experiments
on vacuums, the earliest published report of this
work. This supplement contributed greatly to the
success of Schott's compendium; and as a result he
became the center of a network of correspondence
as other Jesuits, as well as lay experimenters and
mechanicians, wrote to inform him of their inventions
and discoveries. Schott exchanged several letters
with Guericke, seeking to draw him out by
suggesting new problems, and published his later
investigations. He also corresponded with Huygens
and was the first to make Boyle's work on the
air pump widely known in Germany. Schott repeated
Guericke's experiments, and later those of
Boyle, at Würzburg, as well as some medical experiments
on the effects of intravenous injections.
He does not, however, seem to have attempted
any original investigations.
During the last years of his life, Schott was engaged
in publishing this mass of material, besides
what he had brought with him from Rome, adding
his own commentaries and footnotes: he produced
some eleven titles over eight years (1658-1666).
But although his industry was impressive, these
books consist largely of extracts from communications
he had received or from books he had used.
Schott was so determined to include all possible
arguments on every side that it is often hard to discover
what he himself thought. While he maintained
that the experiments of Guericke, Torricelli,
Boyle, and others had not produced a true vacuum,
the space exhausted of air being filled with “aether,”
he accepted the assumption that the phenomena
previously attributed to the effects of horror
vacui were really due to atmospheric pressure or
to the elasticity of the air. In a treatise on the then
very popular theme of the origin of springs, his
own opinion, when finally expressed, amounted to
saying that everyone was right: some springs are
due to precipitation, some to underground condensation,
and some are connected directly to the sea.