Emanuel Swedenborg 

Although Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772) worked in the eighteenth century, his investigations into the nature of physical, physiological and spiritual processes are still relevant today, although they are not as widely known as they deserve. I  briefly describe the stages in Swedenborg's life, and describe the range and accessibility of his writings.

Other pages on this site outline his mature teachings with particular relevance to what is relevant to the concerns of contemporary science, and to the concerns of those wishing to extend that science.

Life

Swedenborg went to University in Sweden just when the new Newtonian ideas of mechanical explanation were beginning to supplant the older Cartesian views. For the first part of his life, Swedenborg was as enamoured with the idea of a mechanical basis for all natural phenomena as any classical physicist. He followed up lines of investigation in fossils, sailing, salt and mineral production, longitude determination, magnetism, and various chemical processes (to name only a few). He developed crude ideas for submarines, and flying machines and designed more practical things such as dry docks, pumps, and a way to transport small ships fourteen miles overland to help the king win a battle. From the age of 28 he was an Assessor for the Royal College of Mines, having a full position from 36. 

All through this time, however, he was interested in the foundations of physics. After three years he published his great work, Opera Philosophica and Mineralia, of which the first volume was called The Principia, or the First Principles of Natural Things. In this, Swedenborg posited atoms within atoms, or discrete orders of particles, such that the smaller or more fundamental particles had discretely higher energies and moved internally in rapid vortical patterns. The appearance of solidity was provided by the speed at which the internal parts moved, and because this motion was in a directed spiral, there was a polarity to the motion which Swedenborg used to explain the magnetisation of solids. The ultimate constituent was the 'natural point' which was infinitely small and had infinite tendencies to motion. He then proceeded on the astronomical scale to explain the origin of the solar system as the progressive condensation of solar matter. 

There are considerable similarities of these early ideas with what science has subsequently discovered. The modern atom with its rapidly circulating electrons appears to be solid in the same way he suggested, and rather differently from what Boyle and Newton imagined. Modern physics too has realised that the constituents of atoms have higher and higher energies, with the proposed quarks having energies much larger than appear in normal molecular, atomic, or nuclear processes. His ideas of intrinsic polarity in the constitution of particles is a remarkable anticipation of the notion of spin in modern particle physics, while the same ideas applied to magnetic materials produced pictures of magnetisation which are still valid today. 

By means of his theories of physics, he was trying to answer the question, 'how can an Infinite Being create a finite world?'. The intermediate nature of the 'natural point', being in some respects finite and in some respects infinite, was in part his solution to this problem. 

The Search for the Soul

He was particularly interested in the structure and function of the nervous system, and was impressed by the hierarchical substructures of organs, bundles, and then single nerve fibres. As with the physical world, he understood that the human body was constructed of smaller units, and these of still smaller entities. He postulated what he called 'cerebellula' ('little brains') as the smallest functionally autonomous units in the brain, and, against Descartes, became convinced that psychological functions were mediated by the cerebellula themselves. Various observations convinced Swedenborg of the primacy of the cerebral cortex, and also that different regions of the cortex were specialised for particular functions. This is the beginning of the theory of cerebral localisation. He also speculated that various subcortical grey matters (in particular the cerebellum, the oblongata, and parts of the spinal medulla) had the capacity to act as motor centres in their own right, and allow highly developed motor habits in humans. These views demonstrate Swedenborg's remarkable intuitive grasp of a subject which others have had to elaborate over a long period. 

He didn't find the soul in the brain, however, and he was led to investigations in psychology. Here he again applied his scheme of 'discrete degrees' of organisation. He saw the capacities of the mind to have sense data, to organise these into thoughts and ideas, and to judge those thought and ideas as three levels of sensation, thought, and reason or judgment, with each level being discretely higher than the previous. This idea of stages of psychological development reappears today in the theories of Piaget and Erikson. 

New Insights

The Importance of Swedenborg

Writings