Emmanuel Swedenborg's philosophy of the human organism

investigation of the human mind. Swedenborg gives a new foundation to psychology by basing it upon physiology.

Swedenborg was born in 1688 in Sweden. His father was a devout Swedish Lutheran pastor who later became a bishop. Swedenborg’s deep religious sense was remarkable even as a child. However he turned to mathematics and astronomy at an early age. When he was 22 he visited England and met the astronomers Halley and Flamsteed and also mathematicians. At this period of his life he had international recognition as a scientist of outstanding ability in many fields, whose ideas were often ahead of his time. His inventions include a submarine, a universal musical instrument, a flying machine and a method of analysing the mind. His chief interests were mechanics and everything connected with geology, including the processes of mining. His studies included anatomy, chemistry and physics. He was deeply concerned with the subject of the origin of the earth and the relation of scientific theories to the Genesis story of creation. After many years of work in the field of metallurgy he was appointed to the Swedish Board of Mines where he worked for 30 years. The first of his major works was published when he was 45 years of age. This was the Opera Philosophica et Mineralia, of which the first volume, entitled the Principia, was a philosophic statement of the origin of the universe.

Swedenborg’s significance as a writer on cosmology lies, on the one hand, in the fact that he showed the sense in which the ideas of the ancient writers—in particular Plato and Aristotlk—were applicable to science. He restated the doctrine of teleology, the notion of purpose and of divine causation in the universe. On the other hand, he carried the revolution of thought brought about by Copernicus a stage further. He asserted that the gal containing our solar system began as a spiral nebula. Thus all the suns of our galaxy, including our own, with their planets, are now in spiral orbits about the great axis of the universe which runs through the Milky Way. Swedenborg’s work was published more than 25 years before that of Kant and Laplace. His name, however, is seldom mentioned among those who have contributed to modern theories of the universe.

In the Principia, Swedenborg begins with the philosopher himself and makes wisdom the goal of his philosophy. He gives three

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