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Useful Phrases and Scientific Terms: Examples from Emanuel Swedenborg’S Notebooks

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Useful Phrases and Scientific Terms: Examples from Emanuel Swedenborg’S Notebooks USEFUL PHRASES AND SCIENTIFIC TERMS: EXAMPLES FROM EMANUEL SWEDENBORG’S NOTEBOOKS Maria Berggren Swedenborg’s works Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) is best known in his capacity of Christian mystic and theologian. As such he had a follower – at least for some time – in William Blake, inspired August Strindberg to write some of his greatest plays, and intrigued his namesake Imanuel Kant sufficiently to make him compose one of his wittiest works, the pamphlet Träume eines Geistersehers. As a young man, however, Swedenborg was a scientist of great ambition.1 Together with Christopher Polhem, inventor and constructor, Swedenborg edited Sweden’s first scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus, in 1716–1718. The journal was important not least as scientific findings were presented mainly in the mother tongue – in spite of the Latin title. It was filled with examples of inventions made by Swedenborg and Polhem: amongst other things, a hearing aid, a speaking tube, an air pump and a flying machine. Swedenborg’s interests were wide, and from around the same time (1717–18) included mineralogy, mining, chemistry and cosmology. Some treatises were published in the late 1710s and early 1720s, among them the Prodromus principiorum rerum naturalium and Nova observata et inventa circa ferrum et ignem, both published in Amsterdam in 1721. About ten years later Swedenborg presented his next great work in the same field to an international readership. Three grand tomes on mineralogy and min- ing, the Opera philosophica et mineralia, were published in Dresden and Leipzig in 1734, and also met with considerable international recognition. In the early 1740s, Swedenborg turned his gaze from macrocosm to microcosm. In search for evidence of the immortality of the soul, ut ipsis sensibus demonstretur, he set out to explain the anatomy and physiology of 1 A comprehensive introduction to Swedenborg’s scientific writings can be found in Inge Jonsson, Visionary scientist. The effects of science and philosophy on Swedenborg’s cos- mology (West Chester, PA, 1999). 222 maria berggren the human body in great detail and in accordance with the latest findings in the field. Two volumes of the Oeconomia regni animalis, were published in Amsterdam in 1740–1741. Swedenborg’s next effort in the same genre, the Regnum animale, was planned to consist of no less than seventeen volumes.2 Only three were published, whereof the first treated of the organs of the abdomen. According to the plan of contents printed in volume 1, the last volumes were to describe the higher functions of the human body: the human soul (volume 16) and the interaction of body and soul (volume 17). A great amount of material remained in manuscript form. In the year 1745, Swedenborg abandoned his scientific career altogether and turned from the mapping of the natural world to the exploration of the spiritual sphere. He published vast Bible commentaries, for example the Arcana coelestia, an interpretation of Genesis and Exodus, in five and three volumes respectively. He also edited several shorter works in which he presented his theology. One of these was the De coelo et inferno, published in London in 1758, which was later to become one of his most popular works. The Swedenborg Archives As a natural scientist, Swedenborg had been elected to the newly founded Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1741. At Swedenborg’s death many years later, in 1772, his preserved manuscripts were donated to the Academy. There they remain today together with first editions of many of the printed works, Academy correspondence and related documents, form- ing the Swedenborg Archives at the Center for History of Science. Four years ago, in June 2005, the whole collection was included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Swedenborg’s manuscript writings, in eighty substantial volumes, form the kernel of the Swedenborg Archives. They cover the whole period from the late 1710s to Swedenborg’s last years, and contain writings from both his scientific and the theological periods. A few of the volumes consist of clean copies of works that were printed. Others contain preparatory material or manuscripts for works that were not printed in Swedenborg’s 2 Note that regnum animale in these titles is not “the Kingdom of Animals” but “the Kingdom of the anima”, “the Soul’s Kingdom”..
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