Overview
In addition to his theological writings, Emanuel Swedenborg wrote about 30 scientific volumes on a wide range of topics.
Emanuel Swedenborg was in his fifties when he entered his visionary period. He spent his youth learning from some of the top scientists of Europe, and in his early adulthood he worked for Sweden’s Board of Mines, helping to make improvements to Sweden’s mining technology while pursuing his own studies in mathematics, astronomy, and other areas.
His quest to understand the nature of matter and the laws of physics led him to explore the connection between the soul and the body, which in turn led him to a detailed examination of the science of anatomy. Along the way he made some remarkable discoveries, though his curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied until he turned his attention to the world of spirit.
Early Training
Swedenborg entered the University of Uppsala at age eleven, already fluent enough in Latin to take classes there, where students were taught in Latin and expected to know Greek as well. There young Emanuel studied a broad range of subjects, graduating ten years later after presenting a dissertation on the maxims of Publilius Syrus Mimus (fl. 1st century BCE), a former Roman slave whose philosophy emphasized free will, good works, and the importance of reason above all else.
After graduation, he took an extended trip abroad to further his academic studies, as was the custom for young Swedish men of his class.
His first stop was London, England, where, as he wrote to his brother-in-law back in Sweden, he indulged his “immoderate desire” to learn about mathematics and science. He spoke in his letters of reading the works of Isaac Newton (1642–1727) every day. Newton was living in London at the time, though it’s not known whether Swedenborg ever succeeded in his quest to meet the scientist.
He did, however, meet the astronomers Edmund Halley (1656–1742) and John Flamsteed (1646–1719), the physician and botanist Hans Sloane (1660–1773), and the geologist John Woodward (1665–1728). He also made a point of renting rooms from craftsmen—a clock-maker and a cabinet-maker, for example—focusing on learning applied sciences and sharing the knowledge he gained with the professors back at the University of Uppsala.
After two and a half years in England, Swedenborg went to France by way of a five-month stay in Holland, where he learned the art of lens grinding. In Paris he likewise met and learned as much as he could from scientists of all types, including studies in astronomy and geometry. After a year in France, he returned to Sweden.
Inventions
Swedenborg returned to his native country full of ideas. He wrote a letter to his brother-in-law describing plans for fourteen inventions, including:
- A flying machine (“a machine, with whose aid a man could rise into the air and travel aloft”)
- A submarine (“a kind of boat in which one could travel underwater wherever one wanted”)
- A machine gun (“a gun machine that will shoot ten or eleven thousand shots an hour”)
- A system of sluices that could be used to transport boats across land
- Several types of water pumps (which he would later put into use when he worked for Sweden’s Board of Mines)
- A universal musical instrument (“by the aid of which the most unskilled in music can play all kinds of harmonies that are found in the score”)
In 1716, Swedenborg established Sweden’s first scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus. The purpose of the journal was to highlight the inventions of Christopher Polhem (1661–1751), who would later become known as the “father of Swedish mechanics.” Though the majority of the articles in the journal focused on Polhem’s work, Swedenborg included a number of his own ideas, including plans for some of the inventions he had described to his brother-in-law.
During the time that Swedenborg edited and published Daedalus Hyperboreus, he also wrote the first work on algebra published in Swedish. In addition, he published several articles on finding longitude at sea by observing the moon and the stars, a special project of his since his time in England.
Mining and the Physical Sciences
In 1716, Swedenborg was appointed as an extraordinary assessor to the Board of Mines, a position that initially involved acting as Polhem’s assistant. Through a series of improvements to mining operations and support of the king’s war efforts, Swedenborg established himself as an accomplished member of the board. Throughout his career on the Board of Mines, he took many trips overseas to expand his knowledge of the physical sciences, especially as they related to the mechanics of mining. His travels resulted in a number of books and articles on those topics.
The most important of these works was his three-volume Opera Philosophica et Mineralia (Philosophical and Metallurgical Works, 1734). Volumes two and three concern iron, copper, and brass and are mainly devoted to the technical aspects of mining and smelting. The first volume, however, lays out Swedenborg’s theory of the cosmos.
Published under the Latin title Principia Rerum Naturalium sive Novorum Tentaminum Phaenomena Mundi Elementaris Philosophice Explicandi (Basic Principles of Nature or of New Attempts to Explain Philosophically the Phenomena of the Natural World), the first volume is commonly called the Principia for short, or, in English, Basic Principles of Nature or First Principles. In this work Swedenborg proposed that all of nature originates from a series of first points, points that are “the medium between what is infinite and what is finite.” The points are actually a power or force, and they move in a spiral motion to form bubbles or globules, which then become the basis of all matter.
In the same year, Swedenborg published the work known as The Infinite, in which he explored the nature of the power behind all creation. Though not a strictly scientific work, even by the standards of the time, The Infinite reflects Swedenborg’s efforts to understand how God relates to his creation and how the body relates to the soul. These questions led him into the next phase of his study: human anatomy.
The Search for the Soul
Swedenborg traveled to Amsterdam in 1736 and began work on Oeconomia Regni Animalis, a two-volume work published in 1740 and 1741. The traditional English version of this title, Economy of the Animal Kingdom, results from a too-literal translation of the Latin word animalis, which in this case means “of the soul.” A more recent translation renders this Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain.
In Swedenborg’s time, the microscope was still a new invention, and it led to a new understanding of human physiology. Swedenborg drew on this research in Oeconomia. He described the blood as containing a fine substance called “spirituous fluid,” which he theorized contained the power of the soul. He also extended his theories on the formation of matter to human beings, arguing that every aspect of our development and our being is determined by the soul—that is, by power flowing into us from the Infinite. Swedenborg also argued that the seat of the soul was in the brain, and specifically in the cerebral cortex.
In 1744 and 1745, Swedenborg followed Oeconomia with another anatomical work, Regnum Animale (usually translated The Animal Kingdom, though recently replaced with The Soul’s Domain). In the course of researching and writing these two books, he wrote draft manuscripts that demonstrated an amazingly accurate understanding of the function of the brain. He correctly identified the cerebral cortex’s central role in sensory, motor, and cognitive functions at a time when most scientists denied that it played an important role in brain function at all. He correctly identified the hierarchical structure of the nervous system, the localization of cerebrospinal fluid, and the functions of the pituitary gland, anticipating modern breakthroughs by more than a century. He also described the inherent “animation,” or periodic expansion and contraction of the brain, driving the secondary movement of cranial bones, a concept that would not reappear until the twentieth century. Swedenborg’s understanding of neuroscience went unrecognized until these manuscripts were discovered, translated, and published for the first time in the late 1800s.
As Swedenborg was preparing to publish Regnum Animale, a series of spiritual experiences would change the course of his life forever, moving him from the world of physical sciences into the world of spirit. He would later describe himself as a “spiritual fisherman”—one “who investigates and teaches natural truths, and afterwards spiritual truths rationally” (Soul-Body Interaction n. 20).
Swedenborg’s Science as Preparation
By Rev. Dr. Reuben P. Bell
In the Prologue to his second major work on human anatomy and physiology, Emanuel Swedenborg made an uncharacteristically emotional appeal to his readers. Filled with the excitement of his Age of Reason, and inspired by the limitless promise of his day, he proclaims that the time has come to take the scientific method out of the old world of orthodoxy, and free it to sail into the future. Old ideas and prejudices were being overcome, and new, scientific principles were taking their place, formed not just by careful observation alone, but with reason to lead the way. In an urgent appeal to the learned world, Swedenborg announced that it is time to put this New Philosophy into use.
Let us then gird up our loins for work. Experience is at our side with a full horn of plenty. The nine virgins are present also, adorned with the riches of nearly two thousand years: I mean, all the sciences, by whose abundance, powers, and patronage, the work is constructed. The sciences are indeterminate and of no profit or advantage, unless they be applied and made subservient to uses. What is knowledge of numbers, ratios, figures, and forms, in arithmetic and geometry, apart from its benefits in civil life? What are the philosophical sciences, with their predicates, qualities, modes, and accidents, without reference to reality? All things, at the present day, stand provided and prepared, and await the light. The ship is in the harbor; the sails are swelling; the east wind blows; let us weigh anchor and put forth to sea.
Prologue to The Soul’s Domain, n. 23, 1744
Despite Swedenborg’s intellectual might and his considerable efforts at introducing a rational model for spiritual-natural reality, his warning of the growing threat of Naturalism proved to be accurate. Modern science has come to disallow Aristotle’s final cause in its chain of being, and by this omission has set nature as the measure of all things. The dialogue between science and religion is becoming increasingly acrimonious, and both sides are resorting to heated rhetoric where conversation once prevailed. There is a call for a meaningful way to regard spiritual reality, in order to answer the incisive logic of its critics; and traditional theology is falling woefully short of a satisfactory answer to this call.
Many believe that Emanuel Swedenborg’s New Church theology can provide the answer to these critics. This may be true; but scientists do not speak the language of theology, and they do not abide in the abstract world of philosophical propositions. Theirs is the world of experience, and valid experience to them is delivered only by the senses. Their world of physical laws and natural causation, regardless (or perhaps even because) of the complexity it may generate, has no necessity for a creator god. Their questions are scientific, and they expect answers to come in that same language; high-end theology will not do.
But Swedenborg wrote more than theology. His scientific corpus came first, but since it gave way to such sublime theology, many dismiss this work as “preparatory” at best, or quaint science at the least. But he wrote his science books for scientists of his day, who, like those of today, were also struggling with the difficulties of finding both a need and a mechanism for the spiritual causes of natural things. He wrote in their language. To those natural philosophers he offered a program of research that “saved the phenomenon” of experience, yet explained how the connection of nature to its spiritual causes might be at work, underneath the senses. His goal was to serve the objective nature of science while retaining spiritual matters within this objectivity: spiritual and natural worlds, with a single reality to serve them both. I believe that this unlikely Eighteenth Century scientific corpus, essentially overlooked for 250 years, may be the prescription to answer that call.
Swedenborg’s ship of experience and reason was in the harbor; he was eager to weigh anchor, and put forth to sea. Was he ahead of his time? Or was he perhaps speaking to those in some future time who could raise the anchor of orthodoxy, both religious and scientific, and sail away? I believe that Swedenborg’s science – his doctrines and his method – today “stand provided and prepared and await the light. The ship is in the harbor; the sails are swelling; the east wind blows; let us weigh anchor and put forth to sea.”
Why do we separate the two – scientist and revelator, Swedenborg’s pretheological works and his theological Writings? Are they different? Enormously. Are they mutually exclusive? Hardly. Are they complementary? Yes, in a way, because they are sequential, as one is clearly built upon the other. From our modern era we have the luxury of viewing Swedenborg’s whole corpus through the retrospectoscope, a powerful intellectual instrument that may give us perspective, but which may also rob us of empathy for what he was trying to do.
Swedenborg the scientist worked steadily with one thing in mind: he wanted to find out how the world works. And it is essential to understand that to Swedenborg the natural world and the spiritual world were seamlessly related as the one world of spiritual-natural reality.
We tend to look backwards at this man’s works in an analytical way and see the perfection of the theological Writings and the often painful process of his earlier scientific work, and we are inclined to draw a line at his enlightenment. Most folks don’t cross that line into what went before. Why would they? His science is quaint, and incomplete. What good is it in this modern age?
I believe there is great utility in studying Swedenborg the man and his scientific works, if it is done in the proper way, with the proper expectations, and done with humility proper to the task. That’s what New Church scholarship is all about. Swedenborg’s corpus is sequential. Swedenborg didn’t fall out of the sky in 1745 and begin to write revealed truth. Who did the Lord enlist, of all the people in the world, when the Last Judgment was at hand? A man who had been wrestling with the right questions for almost thirty years, that’s who. If you don’t have the questions, what earthly good would the answers be?
Preparation comes in the form of a person’s loves, delights, interests, aptitude, and talents, and how these are developed over time. Pursuing these prepares a person for his or her own unique use. Swedenborg’s preparation was no different: He was led by the Lord but led in the freedom of pursuing his own interests – in his case, a systematic search for the soul’s operation in the body.
His science fell short of this ambitious goal. He would fail to find the nexus of spirit and nature until his spiritual eyes were opened. And fail we will, until we learn to let the Lord take over and lead us to our goals. Swedenborg finally did… and the Lord did… and what we find in the life-line of this curious man is a lesson for every one of us who strives to know the Lord and His creation: Curiosity, humility, and preparation are the ingredients for the enlightenment that follows.
We learn in Revelation Chapter 21 that there are twelve gates into the New Jerusalem. Swedenborg’s science is one of those gates, for those of us who speak the language of science.
Swedenborg’S Mind
By Rev. Dr. Reuben P. Bell
The nature of the human mind is a fundamental philosophical problem that never goes away. Emanuel Swedenborg’s (1688–1772) model of the mind reflects his response to the time in which he lived and worked—the early days of the Enlightenment, when the prevailing Platonic dualism was being challenged by an emerging materialism that denied the existence of anything beyond the physical world of the senses. Preserving a defensible spiritual-natural world view while working within the limits of the new scientific method was his greatest challenge, a task that would require a methodical sifting of the entire Western philosophical tradition. To understand Swedenborg’s ideas on the human mind, therefore, we must start with Plato (424–348 BCE).
Plato’s system was not elaborate. There are two substances, physical and mental, with no material connection between the two. The mind was the soul, and the soul identified with the perfect world of ideal forms. This forged a composite with the physical body, and the two operated in harmony by some method not well described. But the world above was different than the world below, and their mutual interaction comprised a clear dualism of body and mind. The intellectual strength of Platonic mind-body dualism, which is perhaps best described in his Phaedo, was its simplicity. There is an intuitive affection for such a world that promises more than what is seen. It was for other, later philosophers, to make attempts at defining the elusive nature of the interaction of body and mind.
British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) once aptly observed, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”[1] To this we might add that, at least in the arena of theological philosophy, people have tended to either embrace Plato’s dualism in an almost intuitive way or forcefully deny it. History records little common ground between these attitudes of mutual exclusion. Once Plato’s mind-body template was laid down (and this, no doubt, was derived at least in part from Pythagoras and other pre-Socratics), denial of it began to oscillate through the ages. Aristotle’s immediate rebuttal led the way for others who saw no transcendence when they looked at the world or considered the operation of the mind.
Although a student of Plato, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) did not follow his master in all things. Raphael’s famous painting of the pair pacing through the Lycaeum shows Aristotle’s urgency for seeing things as they appear, while Plato points patiently upward, toward the source of all things.[2] Their disagreement, as depicted by Raphael, is amicable; but there is an ideological dichotomy at work here that will grow more divisive with time.
Aristotle was a master at observation and classification. His world was essentially self-contained. Plato’s ideal forms have now descended to earth as products generated by physical things themselves. The soul is a function of an organized body, no longer independent or separate in any way. For Aristotle, matter and form—mind and body—are linked in a one-dimensional composite that requires no other world, and forms do not outlive this one. Form is a product of the quality of matter to which it inheres. Plato’s dualism is no longer necessary in Aristotle’s hylomorphic[3] world of experience, and human minds, though predictably complex, are not receivers of absolute truth. For Aristotle, the brain is an organ for cooling the blood, and the mind is little more than an appendage of the body. But, like his teacher, he offers little in the way of explanation for the marvelous things that minds can do.
With the loss of classical texts to the West, medieval scholars did not extend the thinking of the Greeks. The early Christian church had little use for pagan philosophy as a whole, and speculation on the operation of the mind—much less its operation in the body—was not much entertained. Church theologians turned their attention to matters of salvation in the Gospels and Epistles, and deep philosophy was not the order of the day. Even the Christian mystics, who would later enrich their tradition with the depth of Plato and Plotinus, were not yet looking in that direction; the simple asceticism of the Desert Fathers was setting the course of their evolution. Scholars who stand out in this period were those few who did not fit this pattern, and who blended their Christianity with first Platonic and later Aristotelian philosophy as these texts reappeared in the West.
To Augustine (354–430 CE), a complex figure with Greek classical learning and Manichaean roots, the mind was more than a merely reactive faculty; it was transcendent, as it could recognize eternal truths, and it constituted a hierarchy of capacities in a trinity of 1) senses, 2) inner senses, and 3) reason. This was new. Despite his grounding in Gnostic Neoplatonism, his ecclesiastical mind recognized how these three capacities, though separate, might be of “one substance,” thereby neatly satisfying the necessities of Christian doctrine.[4] It was in such things as these that Augustine excelled: strengthening Christian doctrine with the underpinnings of Greek philosophy without diminishing the one or profaning the other. Augustine was a bridge between ancient wisdom and Christian innovation. Both were strengthened by the genius of his method. With Augustine the concept of a triune, hierarchical mind was put in play for those who would follow.
Moving from the Christian dogmatism of Augustine to the more speculative style of late Medieval Scholasticism, we find in Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) another of those Christian thinkers who could draw elements from Greek philosophy to strengthen Christian doctrine without “paganizing” his Christianity in the process. His sources were Aristotelian texts that had reappeared in the High Middle Ages, and mining their depth of detail and breadth of content, he forged a new Christian catechism that was powered by logic strong enough to support the mystical claims of Christianity. To Aquinas, the mind was the domain of the operations of the rational faculty, namely, a dualism of intellect and will. This is no Platonic dualism, however, nor does it anticipate Descartes’ dualism yet to come. These mental faculties work together as one, and combine with the body to produce a composite soul-body unit compatible with Aristotle’s hylomorphic model. Along with Aristotle, Aquinas saw the soul as the form of the body, but for Aquinas the soul is a nonmaterial “intellectual soul” above the mind of reason, a “first principle of life,” which can receive “universals” and live on after the death of the body as a “substantial form.” What we have here is a Christian theologian devoted to Aristotle’s logic and taxonomical order for the strength it can bring to Christianity, but Aquinas looks to Plato for the operation of the mind. In Aquinas’s philosophy, the mind has levels, is transcendent, is linked in operation to the body in some servomechanical way, and it lives independently when this link is severed. Aquinas moves the marker forward, formulating an almost modern model of the mind. But even he does not venture to speculate on a mechanism for how these things might work.
The marker advanced again in 1620, when Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum Scientiarum produced what its title promised: a “new instrument of science” that would transcend the syllogistic logic of Aristotle and replace it with a new, logical method for finding truth in nature. The modern scientific method can be traced back to this date, and Enlightenment science soon became the order of the day. Old questions would now yield to more powerful methods of inquiry: a systematic ordering of experience, for proof of what had hitherto been merely speculation, but at the unfortunate expense of Aristotle’s final cause.[5]
Rene Descartes (1596–1650), one of the first new scientists, was a mathematician and philosopher with a fascination not just for what minds do, but how. His systematic approach to the problem of where body ends and mind begins brought him very close to a new paradigm of mind. Looking back, it is easy to dismiss his errors, but considering his innovative thinking, he made major contributions to the mind/body problem. Descartes’ debt to Plato is obvious: The mind is composed of spiritual substance that is not in space, while the body is of extended matter. This raises questions of an interactive mechanism that he could not readily answer, but it defined an essential operational distance between the two. The soul, or highest mind, sets humans apart from other living things. It is distinct from the body, and it may exist by itself. For Descartes, the mind is a portal for truths beyond natural apprehension, and as such it informs the body and brings order to sensory information. His is a very modern model. His efforts to explain the operation of the brain anatomically and physiologically have brought him ridicule by short-sighted modern scientists, but he was the first with the courage to try. Emanuel Swedenborg leaned heavily on this pioneer as he went about his own version of this work.
Despite the modernity of his method, Descartes relied nonetheless on a priori reasoning to get him past the gaps in his findings, and to move his thoughts to higher levels of operation. With Descartes we find both empirical (based on the observation) and rational (based on reasoning from self-evident propositions) methods fully at work in a combined approach for seeking truth. Reasoning from effects to causes, Descartes entered into sublime speculation on the nature of the soul. Before the new standards of Novum Organum, this would have been both accepted and commonplace; but now there was a tension between what could be determined from experience alone and what was seen as mere speculation. The naturalistic attitude of the Enlightenment was gaining momentum, and was soon to challenge the creative genius of the great natural philosophers yet to come.
Christian Wolff (1679–1754) followed Descartes, arguing that empirical and rational methods can and must work together to lead a scientist to the truth. In his Psychologica Empirica (1732)and Psychologica Rationalis (1734), he was the first to make the formal distinction between these two, but argued that they were one in mental operation: a base of experience guided forward by the intuitive power of reason. A popular mathematician and philosopher, he had redacted the work of Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) into a philosophy of his own design, and expanded the model of the mind into the abstract areas of consciousness, perception, memory, cognition, and the nature of the soul, the origin of all these qualities. He identified the two primary mental faculties as will and intellect, and speculated on the ability of the mind to know itself. His dynamic model of mind did much to bring the science of psychology into the modern era. As we shall see, it is primarily to Wolff that Emanuel Swedenborg looked in forming the framework for his own Rational Psychology (1742), upon which he would build a comprehensive anatomical, philosophical, and theological model for mental activity, spiritual-natural interaction, and spiritual regeneration.
It was Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) who rejected the notion of a priori methodology. Inheriting preeminence among the German philosophers upon Wolff’s demise, Kant made it clear in his 1781 Critik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) that reasoning from effects to causes is not a valid pathway to the truth. In denigrating this method, he is referring to Wolff’s metaphysical ideas in particular, but his anathema is pronounced on all who would employ this method in scientific inquiry. For Kant, a priori conclusions are paralogisms—fallacious syllogisms that rest on ambiguous terms and not on experience. Building an argument on such a flimsy foundation is bad philosophy and leads to bad science. Kant speaks with great authority, and his denial of an intuitive method lingers to this day as a caution against the use of induction in science. Yet it is the use of just this method by Swedenborg that provided the depth of his natural philosophy. A collision of ideologies emerges here, related to our second generalization concerning Plato’s dualism: there are those who reject intuition out of hand.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) came of age in the heady days of the early Enlightenment, under the influence of Bacon’s “new instrument of science.” From his earliest days he was dedicated to using this new method to solve the greatest problems of the natural world. But Swedenborg did not stop there. To him, these problems did not concern nature alone, but nature’s interaction with the world of spiritual causes. His quest was to define both worlds, to define the interface between them, and then to explain the dynamics of spiritual-natural reality. The best place to observe these dynamics at work was in the interaction of soul and body, and he knew that to see the soul at work, one had only to look to the mind. He came equipped for the job, a student of the philosophers who had come before. He was an Aristotelian in his logic, taxonomy, and ethical forms. He was a Neoplatonist in his descriptions of layers, levels, and trines—bridging the two worlds, but in a very particular way. He found a triune mind in Augustine that could recognize eternal truths; and in Aquinas he found a rational faculty in a different kind of dualism, of intellect and will. In Descartes he found all these things and more: another dualism, of spiritual substance and natural matter, meeting at their nexus in the brain, to open the portal for spirit into nature, mind into body, to bring understanding to the mind, and order to the chaos of the senses. He would perfect this model, to fit his own empirical findings of anatomy and, Kant’s warning notwithstanding, to fit the rational findings of induction, too. In Wolff he found a science of mind—a rational psychology—that spoke of consciousness, self-knowledge, spiritual origins, and more. From the contributions of all these philosophers, he could build a model of the human mind as never before.
But Swedenborg did not stop there. To him, science becomes the first of “two foundations of truth, with the spiritual resting on the natural.”[6] Taking all that had gone before, he adds footnotes of his own to Plato—his concepts of influx (the way that life, rationality and form flow into Nature from God, in a continuous Creation), degrees and series (the levels of order and structure for the created universe, including both the physical and the spiritual worlds), forms (defining the spatial interaction of spirit and matter in intermediate steps, from Creator to Creation), and correspondence (the causal relationship between material objects and their spiritual counterparts). With these new tools, developed by necessity along the way, he built a functional model of the human mind that is “set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and . . . the angels of God . . . ascending and descending upon it.”[7] His model is astonishing in its completeness and its plausibility. It works, explaining as it does both what we see and what we know to be true about what we see. It is the bridge between the two worlds, in the order of Descartes and the complexity of Wolff, conceived from empirical observation but, Kant’s warning notwithstanding, guided by the a priori intuition of the rational mind as well.
Such is the model of the human mind—from his collaboration with all those philosophers over all that time—that Swedenborg has given to the learned world. But there is more. The model goes beyond science, although today’s science could profit greatly from the model’s ability to predict and explain the psychology of our experience. It is given for the purpose of our salvation. Once understood, this working model provides a visual image of the mechanism of our spiritual regeneration: proceeding from what Swedenborg terms the rational mind at the top, through the Middle Natural level, to the sensory level “set up on the earth” that provides the foundation for mental life in this world—so simple, and yet so infinitely complex. Nunc Licet.[8]
[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1979), 39.
[2] The work in question, School of Athens, is a fresco housed in the Vatican, originally painted in 1510–11 for Pope Julius II.
[3] Hylomorphic is a compounding of hyle (matter) and morphos (form) to denote a single mind-body unit in which the mind is produced as a necessity of the form of the matter to which it inheres. The hylomorphic framework implies a mind that is not transcendent, that does not outlive the body, and that does not operate above or outside the body. In modern terms we might say that it is just the “brain at work,” and it is an ideology that has led from skepticism to the doctrine of scientific materialism.
[4] Augustine’s clearest enumeration of these ideas is to be found in his Summa Theologiae, written A.D.1265-1274.
[5] Aristotle’s final cause, after the material, formal and efficient causes, was the purpose of a thing, its intangible end point or ultimate state. Bacon abandoned the teleological nature of material things when he devised a system based on sense evidence alone that necessarily excluded the immeasurable quality of a greater, transcendent design. His “new instrument of science” was by definition limited to the world of experience. Enlightenment scientists quickly expanded this concept to mean that the only truth was that which could be recognized by the senses. Thus did Bacon inadvertently plant the seed for the scientific materialism that flourishes in the modern era.
[6] See Swedenborg’s posthumously published work Spiritual Experiences, §5709, for his explanation of the cause-effect relationship between science and theology.
[7] Genesis 28:12. Here in the story of Jacob’s ladder is a mystical analogy for the human mind at work.
[8] True Christianity §508:3, “Now it is permitted.” Swedenborg reported seeing this proclamation over the door of a temple in the spiritual world, and he explains that it means nunc liceat intellectualiter intrare in Arcana fidei, ornow we are allowed to use our intellect to explore the mysteries of faith. The saying has become a kind of motto for his contribution to the revival of the Perennial Philosophy.
Swedenborg the Scientist: An In-depth Study
By Rev. Dr. Reuben P. Bell
As comprehensive as Swedenborg’s scientific works appear, his theistic science can be distilled into the pursuit of a single question: How Spirit comes into Nature. To address this fundamental question, he had to start with simple explanations that predictably led to further questions, each with their own explanations, and so on in a lifelong series of discoveries. We can trace these discoveries in his published works, and in retrospect we can see how each solution to each major problem required the pursuit of yet more answers. At intervals, he developed major “doctrines” (which we might call models, or hypotheses) to answer questions and move his research program forward. Assembled end-to-end, we find a remarkable series of scientific principles, like steps, allowing him to ascend to within reach of that fundamental goal. These models, in the order of their discovery, were 1) a feasible model for the origin of natural matter from spiritual substance, 2) his concept of the Contiguum, 3) his Doctrine of Degrees and Series, 4) his Doctrine of Forms, and finally, his capstone Doctrine of Correspondence. These we need to discuss in some detail in what follows.
The Nature of Matter
Viewed in its entirety, Swedenborg’s scientific corpus attempts an analysis and explanation of the soul’s operation in the body. From an early speculative treatment of physiological action-at-a-distance in the short work On Tremulation (1719), he moved to human anatomy, first in a general way, and then to a more specific, detailed anatomy of the brain. The physiology of the nervous system followed on, with more analysis of the role of the blood and associated humors in carrying a spiritual-natural essence from its source to its destination in all parts of the body. In this grand narrative, he defines the soul and locates its residence in the substance of the cerebral cortex. With all this in mind, it is easy to question his early turn from this theme to a substantial interlude in chemistry and physics.
The answer to this question lies in his purpose for writing Principles of Chemistry (1721) and Principia (1734) before returning to anatomy and physiology. Physical sciences they may be, but for his purposes studies in chemistry and physics were simply starting from the beginning. In order to explain an interactive mechanism for spirit into nature, he had first to establish a rationale for bringing nature into being – deriving natural matter from its parent spiritual substance. This required a comprehensive treatment of matter itself – how it was established and how it behaved at its most primitive level. This was uncharted territory, and had first to be explored and mapped in order to move on to his soul-body research program.
The first, and perhaps most basic of foundational ideas in Swedenborg’s scientific works is his own description of the smallest component of extended matter, that particle giving rise to all other matter in a series of combinations. This was the philosophical prima materia, developed by Swedenborg over time into a model satisfactory to the requirements of his cosmology. Appearing first in The Chemistry as a dimensionless mathematical point (differing little from the classical Euclidean concept), matter was built up from this entity in motion, in a series of “crustals,” which compounded into particles of greater and greater complexity. Each crustal is contained in the crustal subsequent to it in the series, providing a functional continuity to matter at all levels of complexity.
Finding a purely mathematical point inadequate for the production of matter with both active and passive attributes, Swedenborg, in the Lesser Principia, revised this “simple” into an entity of two modes, fluent and quiescent, which combine to become matter. The first “bullular particle” has a surface of quiescent points, an active interior of fluent points, and a fluent sphere outside its surface. It is not difficult to see the rudiments of modern atomic theory in this energetic, bipolar representation of the bullular particle.
Building on this improved model of matter, the first natural point emerges in the Principia as the particle resulting from motion imparted to a dimensionless simple by the will of the Creator. This is the entity that bridges the Infinite and the finite, its perfectly circular internal motion imparting only one dimension, awaiting the addition of linear motion to become extended in space. Within this particle is contained all active and passive principles – all of matter in potential.
By means of the spiritual conatus[1] to motion internal to this “first natural point,” the first extended particle is produced – one of dimension because it moves, not only internally, but now in a line through space as well. Defining one dimension, and thereby part of space, and by combination of internal and external motions, the figure this “first finite” describes in space is a spiral, eternally reciprocating from center to circumference and back again.
Aggregates of connected first finites produce a passive entity, capable of receiving motion. This, the second finite, is produced from the combination of firsts, by contiguity. If, however, a first finite is independent of this contiguity, it becomes an active of the first finite, a particle of matter with inherent motion, and a functional reciprocal to its passive counterpart. It is the combination of these two – the passive “second finite” and the “active of the first finite” which finally produces the first atom, or elementary particle. This particle is truly matter, from which, through a series of combinations, all things of the universe are built up. It is a reciprocal association of active and passive, just as in The Chemistry, but developed to near perfection.[2] We will find this binary construct again, in the theological Writings, manifested as the Conjugial Principle, the presence of the Divine marriage of Love and Wisdom – the Creator Himself – in all things of heaven and earth.[3]
The Contiguum
The next foundational concept is the connected nature of all things in series, already implied in the creational sequence of the Principia as fundamental to the nature of matter itself. An idea appearing in the earliest scientific works, we find it first in On Tremulations (1719), in a discussion of the connection and harmony among all parts of the human body by means of the small nerves (called “fibers” here by Swedenborg). A stimulus to any single part, we are told, is essentially a stimulus to all parts as well, by means of a contiguous system of membranes, from the dura mater to the finest membranes investing the smallest parts.
Next, we find a restatement of this principle of the Principia, offered as an example in a discussion of connectedness prescient of the Doctrine of Degrees:
We see then that there is a contiguity in all things, and that nature produces them by means of connection, extending from one end to the other, both of substances and causes…. The case is the same in animals; parts cover over parts, and grow by contiguity. Both the nervous and membranous system is coherent and contiguous. There is not part in the whole animal to which fibers, muscles, veins, and arteries do not extend; no fiber, which is not derived and ramified by some larger nerve; no nerve, which does not proceed from the medulla spinalis or oblongata and its teguments; and no vein, but what originates from that great one which flows immediately from the heart. The medulla and its teguments, with which the nerves are connected, are in contiguity with the membranes of the whole brain; its grosser coats are contiguous to its more subtle ones; the dura mater to the pia mater; the pia mater to the more subtle parts; and thus the contiguity is continued till it arrives at those simple active substances, from which all motions or affections can afterwards reflect and expand themselves to the most principles of all. Hence it is manifest that there is a continual connection of the whole body with its minutest parts.[4]
Nowhere, not even in his major anatomical works to come, does Swedenborg describe contiguity more completely and elegantly than in this statement. This quotation demonstrates a mature concept of functional integration in the human body, in place by 1734.
In The Mechanism of the Operation of the Soul and Body (also of 1734), Swedenborg expands the concept of the functional nature of this anatomical contiguity, calling it the contiguum in this book, and explaining its importance in both physical and spiritual terms. “With the microscope,” he says, “we observe in the lesser the causes which produce motion and extension in the larger.”[5] All connection supposes contiguity, and the contiguum is the whole system of membranes and fibers, from grosser to finer, spanning and connecting the whole body to a level far below the limits of the microscope. At this finest level is the nexus of soul and body.
The contiguum next appears in The Fiber (1741), of the Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain series, in a discussion of the tunics of nerves and fibers, where a contiguum of nerves is described, from the brain to the finest peripheral branches, along with their tunics, in the whole body. In another context, the pia mater and arachnoid meninges of the brain are identified as universal membranes of the encephalon, in communication with this contiguum of fibers and nerves.
Swedenborg’s most rigorous description of the contiguum appears in The Soul’s Domain (1744), where, in the chapter entitled “The Peritoneum,” we find an exacting description of the three-dimensional membranous matrix spanning levels of complexity from grossest to finest parts.[6] This description does not end with anatomical relationships, but for the first time includes a consideration of the functional nature of the system. Here we find a statement of the role of these membranes in “communication, powers, and actions” – a purpose for this anatomical arrangement beyond that of mechanical support alone.
In the posthumously published Rational Psychology (1742), another in the Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain series, Swedenborg adds a consideration of this contiguum with respect to its function in the cerebral cortex. There is a contiguum of nerves and fibers in the whole brain, we are told, “so that there is no part of the cortex that does not share in the sensation that comes in.”[7] Another, separate treatise of this year (1742) discusses a holism of fibers, each acting separately but also promoting “the general cause.”[8]
From this brief review, it is evident that Swedenborg’s idea of the contiguum was well established early in his career, and was a concept that went far beyond purely descriptive anatomy. His vision of functional integration of myriad body parts, in the concurrently separate and collective operation of each, is a concept which has yet to be fully appreciated by the reductionist science of our own era.[9] And in an astonishing extension of this structure/function model of organic integration in the human body, we will find this same system, if we look for it, in the complex interactions of angels and their societies in the heavens, all existing and interacting in human form.[10]
The Doctrine of Degrees and Series
After the nature of matter and the contiguum, Swedenborg’s third major concept matures as his Doctrine of Degrees and Series but begins with his analysis of the nature of the connection between elements in a relational series. Growing out of the philosophical premise that all things must participate in a causal series of end, cause, and effect, Swedenborg expands this idea by application of his own experience in anatomy and the natural sciences into a practical principle beyond the hypothetical case.
A look at his personal notes reveals his debt to classical notions of the hierarchical nature of matter. In A Philosopher’s Notebook (1740-41)[11] we find a short section, “Degrees, Priors, Posteriors,” summarizing the thinking of Aristotle, Plato and Leibniz on the ordered relationship of substances and organisms in the universe. Things do not exist independently of other things, but exist prior and posterior to them, in a well-defined causal series. The very fabric of the universe rests on this structural pattern. As mentioned above, Leibniz’s interactive matrix of monads must have been particularly compelling in this respect. In developing a doctrine of relationship to fit his anatomical and physiological observations, he no doubt started with these philosophical notions in mind. His Doctrine of Degrees departed from the classical model in the particular extent to which he developed it; and it superseded the Leibnitzian model in its practical applications. As is common in Swedenborg’s work, familiar concepts are often put to use in new and expanded ways to serve the purposes of the program at hand.
No mention of a doctrine of degrees is found in On Tremulation (1719), but the concept is there nonetheless. The structural relationship of the elements of the fibrous contiguum are so arranged, but Swedenborg makes no statement about this arrangement as representative of any special principle. Similarly, within this same context, the Principia says that the elements of the contiguum “owe their existence to their mutual dependence on each other, there being a connection, by mediums, from ultimate, whence all things have respect to their first source from which they derive their existence.”[12] He completes this thought in a later section, by stating that “the visible world is a series of finite things both simultaneous and successive; modified and connected one with the other in a multiplicity of ways, and in a long extended order.”[13] The concept of degrees is here, virtually complete, but without a statement of its doctrinal status, and without a formal name.
A name does appear in The Infinite, in which we are told that for the world to exist, its elements must be related in a series of perfections, or degrees. “The essence of the finite consists in its subjection to degrees and the laws of succession and derived substantiality….”[14] By 1734 we have evidence of a relational scheme governed by certain laws. The general name of this scheme is “degrees.”
By 1740, this principle had become a well-developed doctrine of influence and connection, fully demonstrated in Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain. Chapter VIII of Part I (“An Introduction to Rational Psychology”) is devoted entirely to the explication of this doctrine of degrees, its practical applications, and its implications for other problems of causality. “This doctrine constitutes a principle part of the natural sciences; for everywhere in nature there is order, and everywhere the rules of order. It is a doctrine which expounds the nature of the veriest form itself, without which nothing which is predictable of anything can occur.”[15]
In this lengthy treatment of the subject, the general characteristics, varieties and special features of things related by degrees are fully described, and the fundamental nature of the doctrine is explained. Here we find that “the general series of the earth… are themselves also three, and are commonly called kingdoms; namely the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms.”[16] The same property applies to “every individual animal,” we are told. Each animal is “a series of several other series that are essential and proper to the general one. Its essential and proper series are the viscera… the higher series are the cerebrum, cerebellum, medulla oblongata and spinalis. The lower are the lungs, stomach, liver, pancreas, spleen, womb, kidneys, and several others. These, taken together, are constituent of the form.”[17] All things, we learn, from the universe itself, to the minutest parts of parts, are arranged in a structural and functional series of order inherent to them. And by this principle, all things are related, in a grand and orderly scheme.
This concept of discrete and continuous degrees of order is immediately the most pervasive of Swedenborg’s doctrines, explaining as it does the operations of nature on virtually every level, and by necessity attempting ultimately to explain the operation of the Divine in Nature as well. And at long last, in rational terms, the mystical paradox of pantheism[18] appeared approachable by his Doctrine of Degrees. Here was a single principle, at work on both spiritual and natural levels, that promised to explain the reality of the two as one.
The Doctrine of Forms
We find a notion of connectivity and interaction by discrete and continuous degrees in Swedenborg’s earliest anatomical works.[19] As described above, this relational scheme provides the functional basis for his anatomical and physiological works. But as did all of his doctrines, this one calls for yet another, supporting doctrine to take it to its logical conclusion. As he learned in an early attempt at explaining soul-body interaction[20], discrete degrees can take us from the level of the whole organism down to its inmost parts, but they cannot take us beyond that to the soul. Each degree is a step, just like the steps of a ladder, and there is no provision in the Doctrine of Degrees and Series for a jumping-off place, if we are looking to move from body to soul, nature to spirit. If spirit comes into nature, forming nature as it comes, and if this creational process involves an orderly series of steps, each successively less divine and more natural, down to the inert minerals of the earth, then where is the definitive step across which spirit is no longer spirit and nature becomes wholly inert? This presents a major problem of action-at-a-distance; Without a sufficient explanation, the infinite regress fallacy[21] collapses Swedenborg’s whole program.
We find the solution in The Fibre (1742), another in the Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain series, following the introduction of the Doctrine of Degrees. Its necessity is obvious; Swedenborg had been wrestling with this problem since his earliest works.[22] The Fibre gives a detailed description of the fine structure of the brain, with attention to the nature of the fibers that make up the cerebrum and cerebral cortex. It is here that he finally makes the case for a causal series allowing for spiritual-natural interaction. This he does by introduction of a powerful model of transmutation in seven consecutive forms, from the inert material of the mineral world, inwards to the divine form itself. In his Doctrine of Forms, each form is less fixed and more fluctuant than the one before, by means of subtle changes of geometry, and each is uniquely suited to a particular use. Angular gives way to circular, and circular to spiral. Spiral forms are suited to the movement and morphology of the medullary fibers and the brain itself. And then the series moves inward, to structures so abstracted that they are seen with the mind’s eye alone. The vortical form, moving towards a level beyond space and time, provides the structure of the mind that interacts with the matter of the brain. From here, we move inward, beyond the world of quantity and extension, to levels defined by qualities of divine intention.
In this sequence of seven forms we find the nexus – not a single “jumping off place,” but a series of steps from heaven to earth. Swedenborg explains it this way:
In each degree, when forms are carried up by this ladder, something earthly, material, and finite is cut away and put off, and a certain celestial, perpetual, and infinite is superadded and put on… until a last nothing except what is perpetual, infinite, eternal, pure, holy, that is, Divine, remain.[23]
In Chapter XVI we find a challenging 32-page treatment of Swedenborg’s Doctrine of Forms. The challenge is not just in archaic terminology or issues of translation, although these are always considerations in Swedenborg’s scientific works. The real challenge comes in comprehending a system that moves from our familiar world of measurable time and spatial extension to a pre-geometric world of intention and quality; and then comprehending that these are complementary attributes of a single reality. Swedenborg’s method is at work here, in a model that allows us to visualize the dynamic interface of spirit and nature, not in metaphysical language alone, but in terms of science and geometry as well. This is the goal of valid theistic science. But our minds and our science must be acclimated to navigate such a system as this.
The Doctrine of Correspondence between the Two Worlds
As we have seen, it was late in the development of the Doctrine of Degrees that the question of the nature of relationships of things distant in the hierarchy was raised, which led of necessity to a consideration of the ultimate problem of relationship and distance – that of the relationship of spiritual to natural things. How to get from the one to the other was addressed by the Doctrine of forms; the “jump” was no jump at all, but was instead was across the span of an orderly series of geometrical forms, each uniquely suited to a particular function of life. But there was no easy solution to the most important question of all. The new problem was that of action across this phase change of natural matter spiritual substance: what force or impulse connects spirit with nature across the divide, and what maintains this relationship?
Despite every effort to complete this progression of Influx to Degrees to Forms to what lies beyond, Swedenborg found himself increasingly frustrated by the elusive nature of this principle. There was still the problem of pantheistic connection to overcome: If even remotely connected, then all of Creation is nothing but an extension of the Creator. But with no connection, the Creator does not participate in creation. Dismissing these extremes of Pantheism and Deism, Swedenborg sought the mechanism whereby the two worlds could be linked in action, but apart in space. The problem was crucial to solve, and simple enough in principle, but it seemed impossible. The Doctrine of Correspondence, the last of Swedenborg’s major concepts to be considered here, proved to be the most demanding of them all.
Correspondence as a doctrine is not considered as early as On Tremulation, but we do find its rudiments in the “Fourth Rule of Tremulation”: There are sympathetic vibrations in strings if both strings are tuned to the same key.[24] Elsewhere in the book is a discussion of whole systems of sympathetic tremulations arising from a single small tremulatory force.[25]
It is in The Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain that Swedenborg demonstrates both the necessity and utility of a doctrine of correspondences. The discussion arises in Part I, Chapter VIII, I-IX, the same series dealing so completely with the doctrine of degrees examined above. He begins by stating that Aristotle’s “physical influx,” Descartes’ “occasional causes,” and the “preëstablished harmony” of Leibniz are all inadequate to solve the problem of spiritual/natural association. What is needed, he says, is a new doctrine of order and connection to explain the true condition. This condition he defined as coëstablished harmony.[26]
Later, we are given five rules governing the relationships of individual elements of different organizational levels which correspond (some general rules for correspondence).[27] This serves as an introduction to both the necessity and the general nature of correspondences, again called coëstablished harmony, but it offers little in the way of a mechanism for how things might interact by means of these relationships. His description is more anatomical at this point than dynamic and is confined to the relation of things on the natural plane alone.[28]
In Part II of the same book, however, in a section dealing with the human soul, Swedenborg finally discusses correspondences with respect to the spiritual/natural nexus. In concession to the transcendent nature of this conjunction, he says here that there “is no analysis and no abstraction that can reach so high….” It is “infinitely above the sphere of the human mind.”[29] The scientific method could not reach above its limits to find the soul.
In a final restatement of this disappointing observation, Swedenborg closes his Rational Psychology by reluctantly admitting that this knowledge of correspondences,[30] which “has hitherto been unknown to the world,” is still beyond his grasp. “…there are many rules to be premised, data to be set forth, and truths to be connected together before I can undertake the task…. For this reason, I forbear to make the attempt.” He promises instead another, future book, “which more surely and quickly leads us into hidden truths.”[31] Unknown to Swedenborg at this time, a complete doctrine of correspondences was not to come at all, by any amount of mental effort or analysis. What was to come was spiritual crisis, and a period of failure and doubt, followed by the answer he could not obtain – revealed at last in unifying spiritual visions of ultimate reality.
Revelation
This unifying vision would not be an instantaneous flash of insight, but the wisdom of continuous, cumulative experience in the spiritual world. Here Swedenborg saw the connections, the relationships of things with other things, and haltingly at first, he began to see what his natural eyes had not seen before. In his visions of “man the microcosm” of the cosmological macrocosm, or Maximus Homo, he saw the nexus, and in doing so, he found his correspondences; but he found more than this. The contiguum, and the finest things of nature were there, but they are no longer the center of his attention. Instead of the bloods, the membranes, the fibers and the cortical substance, he now tells us that
The soul, which lives after death, is the spirit, and is in complete form a person; the soul of this form is the Will and the Understanding, and the soul of these is Love and Wisdom from the Lord.[32]
In further application of this enlightenment, Swedenborg redefines the soul, its domain, and its operation in the natural body, and thus from experience,[33] finally defines his unifying doctrine of correspondence:
Before any statement can be made about influx and the operation of the soul into the body, it must be well understood that the internal man is formed according to the image of heaven, and the external man according to the image of the world; insomuch that the internal man is a heaven in the least form, and the external man is a world in the least form, thus is a microcosm. That the external man is an image of the world, may be seen from the external or bodily senses; for the ear is formed according to the whole nature of the modification of the air; the lungs according to the whole nature of its pressure, as also is the general surface of the body, which is held in its form by the circumpressure of the air, and so on.
From all this it is now evident that in man the spiritual world is conjoined with the natural world, consequently that with him the spiritual world flows into the natural world in so vivid a manner that he can notice it, provided he pays attention. All this shows the nature of the intercourse of the soul with the body, namely, that properly it is the communication of spiritual things which are of heaven, with natural things which are of the world, and that the communication is effected by means of influx, and is according to the conjunction.[34]
Using the familiar subject of the human body for his model, and a mystical image of the heavens in human form for his evidence, he shows the correspondences at work. Not surprisingly, sense-data and spiritual experience combined to perfect the doctrine of the two worlds, and a new philosophy was born to serve them both.
What has been said may be seen in a kind of image and thus corroborated by the correspondence of the heart with love and of the lungs with the understanding. For if the heart corresponds to love, its determinations, which are arteries and veins, correspond to affections, and in the lungs to affections for truth; and as there are also other vessels in the lungs called air vessels, whereby respiration is carried on, these vessels correspond to perceptions. It must be distinctly understood that the arteries and veins in the lungs are not affections, and that respirations are not perceptions and thoughts, but that they are correspondences, that is, they act correspondently or synchronously; likewise that the heart and the lungs are not the love and understanding, but correspondences: and inasmuch as they are correspondences the one can he seen in the other.[35]
These correspondences will not be found with the microscope or teased out with the dissection needle. They are beyond the senses, and yet they can be inferred as central to the operation of all things of the universe. What had been Swedenborg’s greatest disappointment became his conatus into a frame of reference where the causes of natural truths were evident.
[This is an excerpt from Bell, Reuben P., Intelligent Design: Swedenborg’s Theistic Science and the Problem of Organic Form, Swedenborg Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, 2019]
[1]Swedenborg uses an accepted technical term of his day here, that is rich with historical precedent and metaphysical virtue. Rendered “endeavor” by most English translators, the term implies a spiritual origin for the effort behind the motion the conatus imparts. This is a window into the theistic nature of Swedenborg’s program: a firm foundation in spiritual reality and the spiritual origin of natural things.
[2]Swedenborg’s detailed description of the simple and its progression to the “elementary particle” is presented in the Principia, chapters I-VI. Subsequent chapters in Part I deal with combinations of these elements in a series of “finites” in a creational sequence leading all the way to the formation of the solar system and earth.
[3]Examples of this universal principle are found in Arcana Coelestia n. 718, Divine Love and Wisdom, nn. 14, 34, 36, 46. See also Bell, Reuben P., “The Conjugial Principle,” New Philosophy, Vol. C, Nos. 1 & 2, January-June, 1997.
[4]Swedenborg, Emanuel, The Principia, Walton and Mitchell, London, 1848, reprinted by the Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1976, Vol. I, pp. 21-22.
[5]Swedenborg, Emanuel, The Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation, also the Mechanism of the Operation of the Soul and Body (1734), Swedenborg Society, London, 1965, p. 27.
[6]In The Soul’s Domain, Vol. I, Ch XVI, nn. 318, 19, 20, we find not only a very modern description of the matrix of connective tissue membranes and fibers linking all levels of organization in the human body, but a prescient appreciation of this system as communicative as well as structural.
[7]Swedenborg, Emanuel, Rational Psychology, A. Acton, Ed., Swedenborg Scientific Association, Philadelphia, 1950, n. 18.
[8]Swedenborg, Emanuel, Psychological Transactions and Other Posthumous Tracts, 1734-1744, Tr & Ed. by Alfred Acton, Swedenborg Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn, PA, 1984, Chapter III of Transaction No. 5, Action, pp. 118-19.
[9]Research in molecular biology and osteopathic medicine of only the last fifty years has produced a model of functional integration of fascial elements by means of electromagnetic as well as structural continuity. Swedenborg’s contiguum is now the matrix, a universalizing concept that promises to explain the unanimous action of all parts, long observed but never before explained in physiological terms. For an introduction to this concept, see
Bell, Reuben P., Experimental Consideration of Structural Proteins as Electron Conductors – A Conceptual Model of Functional Integration in Biological Systems, Master’s Thesis, University of Tulsa Graduate College, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1977; Lee, R. Paul, Interface: Mechanisms of Spirit in Osteopathy, Stillness Press, Portland, Oregon, 2005; Bell, Reuben P., The Osteopathic Hologram: A Multidimensional Model For Diagnosis and Treatment, Journal L’Ostéopathie Précisément, Numero 22, Été 2006; Paoletti, Serge, The Fasciae: Anatomy, Dysfunction, and Treatment, Eastland Press, Seattle, Washington, 2006
[10]There is a perennial mystical tradition recognizing the process of Creation by means of the Divine in human form. The “Primal Man of the Upanishads gives rise to the world, and the Macroanthropos of Plutarch was a similar creational figure in the Greek tradition. The Gnostic Anthropos of the heavens was the template by means of which the Demiurge fashioned the earthly Adam. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, taught that the “body of Christ” was the collection of believers in the world who, as its “members” functioned as an organic human whole. The centerpiece of the Jewish Kabbalah is the sefirot (emanations)of Ein-Sof into Creation in the form of Adam Kadmon, or “primordial man,” by means of which spirit is translated into nature. As he so often did, Swedenborg saw this same spiritual principle, but through a larger lens, calling it Maximus Homo, or “universal human,” – the heavens, with the individuals there and their communities, functioning as organs in a single body. For Swedenborg the emanations become correspondences of these, giving form and life to all things of the natural world: “The whole visible universe is therefore nothing else than a theater that is representative of the Lord’s kingdom. And this in turn is a theater representative of the Lord Himself.” (Arcana Coelestia n. 3,483)
[11]Swedenborg, Emanuel, A Philosopher’s Notebook: Excerpts from Philosophical Writers and from the Sacred Scriptures on a Variety of Philosophical Subjects; Together with Some Reflections, and Sundry Notes and Memoranda, Alfred Acton, Tr. and Ed., Swedenborg Scientific Association, Philadelphia, PA 1931, pp. 236-240
[12]op. cit., Principia, p. 20.
[14]op. cit., The Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation, p. 116.
[15]Emanuel Swedenborg, Economy of the Animal Kingdom (Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain), Swedenborg Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn, PA, 1955., n. 581.
[18]Any creational scheme must deal with the problem of connection between Creator and Creation. In the kabbalistic series of sefirotic emanations by means of which Ein-Sof steps down into Creation, there is no identifiable point at which divine becomes natural; Malkut is no different than Keter, and Ein-Sof and nature are one. It is the same with the creational pleroma of the Gnostics, the series of worlds across which the divine descends to enter into Nature: divine is continuous with nature. This presents a major problem for human spiritual freedom or free will; if God creates the natural world from himself, with no mechanism to effectively separate himself from it, then nature is an extension of God, and its creatures, including human being, are gods as well. This is pantheism, a condition of continuity of God with Nature. Solutions to this problem must consider its opposite condition, that of complete separation, as seen in the eighteenth century development of Deism. Swedenborg developed a model in which there is a structural separation of God and Nature to allow for free will, but a functional relationship allowing for the operation of the divine providence in the natural world as well.
[19]As early as 1719, in On Tremulation we find a speculative model of communication between remote parts of the body by means of minute vibrations (tremulations), traveling along the nerves. But this communication could not be possible without an orderly, hierarchical arrangement of these nerves, and in describing this arrangement, we find Swedenborg’s notion of discrete and continuous degrees of order at work. And his description of these levels at work in the whole organism presages his later model of the matrix-like contiguum, here as well.
[20]In The Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation/The Mechanism of the Operation of the Soul and Body (1734) Swedenborg makes a measured case for climbing up to the soul but was unable to explain just where and how the nexus between these two levels of reality might be or operate. The nature of this elusive nexus within the relational series of discrete degrees, would require more work for him to find.
[21]We will encounter this claim in Part III, in opposition to theistic explanations of evolution, by proponents of scientific materialism. “Infinite regress” is an old argument, but one that cannot be easily tossed off, in the defense of any model of spiritual causation. It was famously framed by Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time (1988), becoming a cliche of sorts, in scientific circles: “A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s tortoises all the way down!”
[22]As early as 1734, we see the necessity for an solution to this problem, when, in The Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation, Swedenborg is unable to identify a nexus, across which spirit and nature might interact. In this work, as in Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain, it is “discrete degrees, all the way down.”
[23]Swedenborg, Emanuel, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Transaction III: The Medullary Fibre of the Brain and the Nerve fibre of the Body, Swedenborg Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, 1918, n. 271.
[24]op.cit., On Tremulation, p. 2
[26]op. cit, Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain, n. 593
[28]In Dynamics of the Soul’s Domain, Part I, Chapter VIII we find a discussion of the correspondence between successive members of a series of degrees. One example of this is taken from the series of red blood, purer blood, spirituous fluid. Each of these “bloods” corresponds to the one above and below it in the series, and the vessels proper to each also correspond, as the one below subsists by means of the one above it in the series. Of significance here is that all of the elements of the series are on the same (natural) plane. Then follows a discussion of the correspondence between elements in a series of mental to natural, and the possibility is finally raised of a ladder of correspondences reaching to the soul itself. But the “universal mathematics” necessary to make this jump goes beyond the doctrine of degrees, and has yet to be worked out. Here is the doctrine of correspondence in potential, incomplete, and yet to be perfected.
[29]op. cit., Rational Psychology, nn. 251-52.
[30]The doctrine is referred to here as a “universal mathesis.”
[31]op. cit, Rational Psychology, n. 576.
[32]Swedenborg, Emanuel, Divine Love and Wisdom, Swedenborg Foundation, New York, 1988, n. 394.
[33]Of particular interest here is the audacity of Swedenborg to give spiritual experience the same weight as natural, sense-based experience. This is the prevailing character of his theological Writings, as compared with the methodical empiricism of the scientific works, but he does not abandon empiricism altogether; observations from spiritual experience and conclusions drawn from them are expected to square with the sense-data of this world, as both represent two poles of the same reality. This might be considered a radical empiricism of sorts, applied out of the necessity to deal with the spiritual experiences that informed Swedenborg’s theology.
[34]Swedenborg, Emanuel, Arcana Coelestia, Swedenborg Foundation, New York, 1984,
n. 6057.