1. S DE BO G ........c~, "':'C1lCTIO
SOC ETY One.) Numb Four
Swedenborg
as a
Physical Scientist
Address .uven by
Professor HERBERT DINGLE, D.Se., A.R.C.S.,
at Swedenborj 250th Birthday Celebration,
Queen's Hall, London, Janusry 29th, 1938

4. SWEDENBORG
as a
PHYSICAL SCIENTIST
Address given by
Professor HERBERT DINGLE, D.Sc., A.R.C.S.,
at Swedenborg 250th Birthday Celebration,
Queen's Hall, London, January 29th, 1938
SWEDENBORG SOCIETY (INcoRPoRATED)
SWEDENBORG HOUSE
HART STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1
1938

6. Swedenborg as a Physical Scientist
E
MANUEL SWEDENBORG was born in 1688.
In 1743, at the age of fifty-five years, he could
look back on a life devoted to the pursuit of
scientific knowledge, and forward to larger oppor­
tunities for remaining in that service. Applying at that
time for leave of absence to the Swedish Board of
Mines, under which he held high office, he wrote :
" 1 am influenced interiorly by the desire and
longing to produce during my life-time something
real, which may he of use in the general scientific
world.... It is my own chief desire to bring
this work to a close, and to return to my country,
to my office, and to my property, where 1 shaH, in
tranquillity and ease, continue my larger work,
the Regnum Minerale, and thus be of actual use to
the public at large in those matters which properly
belong to the Royal Board."
This project was never realised. Certain abnormal
experiences turned his attention away from, though
never against, scientific work, and' led to the remarkable
5

7. exposItIons of the Scriptures, and consciousness of
Divine revelation, by which he is now chiefly remem­
bered. There is no necessary connection between the
products of the last twenty-nine and those of the first
fifty-five years of his life. If none of his scientific
writings had survived, his theological works would
have had the same daim on our attention as they have
now. That they would ever have been written, how­
ever, without the long, intense, earlier study of the
natural world, 1 do not be1ieve. It is at least unlikely
that Swedenborg the Seer could have come into being
otherwise than from Swedenborg the Scientist. On
this day of remembrance, then, it is fitting that we
should look for a while at the seed from which sprang
the flower that we honour.
We see a man acquainted at first hand with the most
advanced scientific knowledge of his time. In England
he studied Newton's physics, and conversed with the
astronomers, Halley and Flamsteed. He was by occu­
pation an Assessor of Mines, and knew as much as any
man living about the chemistry of mineraIs and their
distribution in the Earth, as weIl as more general
geological science. He successfully undertook more
than one large-scale engineering task. He was an
6

8. expert mathematician, was thoroughly fami]iar with
both the theory and the practice of mechanics, and had
a deeper insight into the mysteries of magnetism than
any of his contemporaries. In anatomy and physiology
he was no less eminent. There appears, in fact, to have
been no department of scientific knowledge in which he
was not a master.
But he was not a mere receptac1e of knowledge. On
every subject of study he brought his own genius to
bear, and behind every effect he looked for the cause.
Though he was by no means unskilled in experimental
technique, and frequently employed it very effectively,
it was the interpretation of the results of experiments
that attracted him most, and he often accepted the work
of others in order to avoid a bias which he might have
feh towards his own observations had he made any.
1 shaH not try even to enumerate aH the original ideas
which he contributed to his studies; time aHows us to
consider only their general character. And here two
things stand out prominently-first, the extraordinary
depth and originality of his thinking; and secondly,
the extent to which he anticipated ideas which did not
become generaUy familiar until long after his day. 1
believe these qualities are shown very strikingly in his
7

9. biological work; on that 1 am not qualified to speak.
1 shall restrict myself to the evidence of his Principia,
published in 1734, which deals mainly with the physical
SCIences.
To mention but two of the· great scientific ideas
which originated with Swedenborg, his conceptions of a
magnet as a collection of elementary particles in regular
alignment, and of the planetary system as a product
of the Sun arising from the inherent potentialities of
its constitution, show such close resemblance to
theories which arose much later as to leave no doubt
that he is to be regarded as the first source of the
essential ideas of those theories. The general lack of
recognition of Swedenborg's priority in expressing
these and otherconceptions has often been deplored,
but 1 do not think it need arouse much regret. He,
1 think, would have been indifferent to the matter.
Those who have strength of mind to follow their own
thoughts undisturbed by contemporary opinion have
also strength to depend for approbation on their own
sense of what is worthy to be praised. Moreover,
scientific ideas come and go; they serve their age and
prepare the way for others. That Swedenborg's ideas
in sorne matters were nearer to those of 1938 than to
8

10. those of 1738 would have seemed of slight importance
to one who thought so lightly of time as scarcely to
mention the word even in his scientific writings; nor
would his stature be diminished by the discovery of
documents showing that his ideas had been formulated
by earlier writers, and forgotten.
The significance of Swedenborg's foresight in these
things lies not in the claim it establishes to priority,
but in its testimony to the greatness of the man's
intellect. This is shown nowhere more forcibly than
in his view of " the means leading to true philosophy."
He lived at a time when the " experimental philo-
sophy," as science was then caUed, had just established
its hold on men's attention. From reasoning about
the world iri the study, men turned to examining it in
the observatory and the laboratory. This transition
from the rational to the empirical, like aU fundamental
revolutions, was not completed in a moment: indeed,
our own generation has seen an important clarification
of the relation between reason and experience which
underlies the experimental philosophy. When, sorne
twenty years ago, the theory of relativity became a part
of science, it was realised with amazement that, by
traditional scientific methods, what had been believed
9

11. - ------
to belong to the basis of science (the then current
notions of space, time and motion) had been uprooted ;
science had apparently reduced itself to absurdity.
Enlightenment came when it was seen that the earlier
idea of science, according to which experience and
reason were alternative means of studying the world,
of which experience was to be preferred, did not
properly describe scientific activity. The correct
description would show experience as the first step,
and reason as the second, in the construction of a true
philosophy; both were equaHy legitimate when pro­
perly related to one another. Here are Einstein's
own words: "The object of aH science, whether
natural science or psychology, is to co-ordinate our
experiences and to bring them into a logical system."'*'
Now let us tum to Swedenborg. "The principal
means which lead to truly philosophical knowledge,"
he writes, "are three in number-experience, geo­
metry, and the power of reasoning,"t and he makes it
clear that they are to be taken in that order. The
correspondence with Einstein is complete, except for
Swedenborg's inclusion of geometry, about which 1
* The Meaning ofRelativity, p. 1.
t Principia, vol. l, p. 2.
10

12. will speak directly; but whereas Einstein's definition
has needed nearly 300 years of practical scientific work
to bring it to birth, Swedenborg's sprang from his own
direct insight into the significance of the new move-
ment. How closely his method of thought accords
with that of the modern physical scientist is clearly
shown in the foJ.1owing passage from a paper read
before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in
1740 :
" There are two ways by which to trace out
those things in nature which lie either open before
us, or are hidden from our eyes--viz., the a priori
which is also called the synthetical method, and
the a posteriori, or the analytical method. Both
are necessary in reflecting upon and tracing out one
and the same thing: for in order to do so there is
required both light a priori, and experience
a posteriori. Now, while the learned among the
ancients followed the former light as remotely and
profoundly as they possibly could, those at a
later period were induced not to accept anything
as witness, unless it was confirmed by experience.
Hence also sorne of the learned at the present clay
seem to have agreed to let thought rest, and to
II

13. make experiments which would appeal to the
senses; yet they did so with the hope and intent
that sorne day experience would be connected
with theory: for experience deprived of an insight
into the nature of things is knowledge without
learning, and a foundation without a building to
rest upon it. The observations of the outward
senses merely furnish data and give information
about things which the understanding oughtto
investigate, and concerning which it ought to
form its judgments."
lt has been said that Swedenborg was not entire1y
liberated from the mediaeval practice of framing arbi­
trary principles, and that much of his reasoning is
vitiated by his assumption that motion must ultimate1y
be spiral because a spiral is the most perfect figure.'*'
1 do not think, however, that this criticism is just.
The postulation of a priori principles is not unscientific
in itself; it becomes so only when such principles are
maintained in defiance of experience, as in the denial
by certain philosophers of the elliptical motions of the
* See, for example, Sir William Barrett's Foreword to the English
translation of the Principia, pp. viii, ix.
12

14. planets because, in the perfect heavens, only perfect
circular motion was possible. But to assert a principle
as a means of co-ordinating experiences, and to judge it
entirely by its fitness for that purpose, is an established
scientific practice; it is the ordinary process of form­
ing hypotheses. And careful reading will show, l
think, that it is this process which Swedenborg is
practising in the First Part of the Principia.
"These principles," he writes, "cannot be
proved by experiment until we have arrived at
elementaries. The principles which are formed
a priori by rational philosophy and a certain degree
of geometrical connection, receive confirmation
also from visible nature; were there no con­
firmation from experience, we should here be only
building casties in the air. Still, however, at this
stage, we cannot appeal to the testimony of
experience; because we are as yet only at the
first outset of our principles, where nothing can
present itself to the senses in the way of pheno­
mena. . . . Our line of argument, however, will
be legitimate, if, with geometry as our guide, we
arrive at the station where elementary nature is
rendered visible and sensible by experiments and
13

15. phenomena; and if the connection of our positions
so accords with reason and geometry that from
the same experiments and phenomena their various
intermediates receive confirmation." (Principia,
Vol. L, pp. 102-3.)
And again, towards the end of these imaginings :
" 1 entreat the indulgent reader to pardon me
for venturing to speak so positively of the elements
and entities of the natura Prima, which are so
unknown and occult, as if they were objects weIl
known and familiar to the senses. It would
indeed be rash in me so confidently to lead him
through such an unexplored region, a region of
so many clouds and shadows, were 1 not aiming,
through the medium of the principles explained,
to arrive at an element in which we are able ta
make experiments, and which, by help of these
and geometry, may be subjected to the most
rigorous examination. When we have arrived at
this stage, if it appears that there is a geometrical
harmony between the experiments and our prin­
ciples, if a connection is pointed out between the
first entity or simple and the forementioned
q.

16. e1ement, 1 then flatter myse1f that 1 shaH have won
the assent of my reader; more particularly as, in
the present age, there is no other way left for us to
open the secrets of nature." (Vol. L, pp. 188-<).)
1 see nothing in this attitude at variance with
scientific principles.
We must bear in mind the danger of isolating
passages from a writer's work and considering them
without reference to the structure of thought in which
they are set. It would be no difficult matter to select
from Swedenborg's Principia paragraphs which, by
themselves, would appear to contradict those just
quoted, and to justify the charge that his attitude to
philosophy was unscientific. Having emphasized at
the beginning, and at frequent intervals throughout the
work, that his principles must ultimate1y be tested by
experience, he was at no pains to make every sentence
unmistakable by itse1f, but evidently trusted the
reader to consider each statement in the light of the
general idea. The fact that products of the imagination
must eventuaHy stand or faH by experience does not
lessen the importance of creating them rationaHy. Ifwe
imagine blindly, it is almost certain that our inventions
15

17. will not be justified by experience, and we shaH have
our work to do again. It s~emed to Swedenborg
that a spiral was a more perfect figure than any other,
and in constructing a scheme which could be tested by
experience, he therefore took spiral motion as a founda­
tion, and gave his reasons for so doing. It is a serious
misunderstanding of his thought to suppose that those
reasons were intended as a substitute for the test of
experience. They were simply reasons for his parti­
cular choice of a starting-point from which to deduce
what could be tested by experience.
We have an almost complete parallel in the work of
Newton, and a still more widespread misinterpretation,
though one of a different kind. Reasoning in exactly
the same way, Newton gave, as his equivalent of
Swedenborg's spiral motion, uniform motion in a
straight line, and his First Law is that an undisturbed
body will move in that way. Like Swedenborg, he
did not intend this as a statement to be tested by
experience, because, according to his own principles,
there was no undisturbed body in the universe that
could possibly exhibit uniform motion in a straight
line. The statement had to be supplemented by a
definition of force and the postulation of particular
16

18. forces, such as gravitation, hefore the realm of ex­
perience was reached. The ohserved motion of a
planet was elliptical. Newton described the ellipse
as the resultant of a straight line and whatever was
necessary to turn a straight line into the observed
figure; and he did so because this last something
could he described in convenient physical terms, and
so ultimately experience could he represented. To
protect himself from the false criticism that his postula­
tion of natural uniform motion was " metaphysical,"
he repeated, in season and out of season, that he did
not make hypotheses. The result has been that he has
escaped the charge of. inventing arbitrary principles,
which has fallen to Swedenborg's lot, but has instead
heen supposed, in his First Law of Motion, to be
stating a fact of experience. He was doing nothing of
the kind. He was inventing an ultimately arbitrary,
hut practica1ly convenient, ideal form of motion, in
terms of which he intended later to express actual
motions which could be compared with experience.
And Swedenborg's procedure is precisely the same,
except that he enters more fully into the details of his
ideal motion, and his reasons for adopting it, than
Newton thought it necessary to do.
17

19. Swedenborg's insertion of geometry as an inter­
mediary between experience and reason needs sorne
comment. We do not now separate geometry from
reason; we regard it as one of the forms in terms of
which reason can interpret experience, but not as a
necessary form. Yet it is to be noted that, as an actual
fact, the interpretation which relativity gives us is
geometrical, and it is believed by many of our leading
physicists that geometry, or "field theory" as it is
sometimes caUed, is capable of covering the whole of
physics. The physical world of Einstein is even now
beyond the grasp of many able minds, yet the essential
ideas embodied in it were apprehended by Swedenborg
in 1734. Let us look at sorne of them.
In the world of re1ativity, matter is no longer
substantial in the old sense, but is a local characteristic
of a geometrical field of motion. There may even be a
universe-the "de Sitter universe," it is caUed-in
which there is motion everywhere, but no matter. This
idea baffles many of us to-day, but in 1734 Swedenborg
wrote: "Although pure motion does not necessarily
require anything substantial as the basis of its existence,
there still pertain to it both form and space, which are
attributes of motion." (p. 58.) Again, motion, in
18

20. relativity, is something "static," a quality of an
unchanging geometrical field in which time and space
are equivalent dimensions. This seems to transcend
ordinary thought, but listen to Swedenborg: "Pure
motion . . . must, therefore, be of such a quality,
thatneither degrees, nor momenta, nor anything of
velocity can be assigned to it; aIl we can say of it is
that such motion actually exists in the whole Infinite."
(p. 63,) Once more, in relativity, unlike Newtonian
mechanics, each movement is taken as a simple,
natural movement, and described without reference to
extraneous forces. "The cause of motion," says
Swedenborg, " must be solely in the simple or point
itself, that is to say, in the internaI motion and state of
the point. We must not, therefore, seek for this cause
anywhere but in the point, and its active force as
acquired by its own internai motion or state." (p. 80.)
1 am not, of course, suggesting that Swedenborg in any
way anticipated the theory of relativity. That theory
was forced on us by facts of which he knew nothing and
to which he would not have attached great importance
had he known of them. But what these passages do
show is the tremendous intellectual power of the man
who, without the guidance needed by many of the best
19

21. minds to-day, could attain to conceptions essentially
identical with those of our most advanced scientific
theories.
The question naturaHy suggests itse1f: How is it
that Swedenborg, who had such c1ear understanding of
scientific principles and practice, and who generated
so many ideas which later became necessary for
scientific progress, yet does not appear in the history
of Science? One after another, his conceptions had
to be re-conceived and his discoveries re-made by
others ignorant of what he had already done. To find
an answer to this question we must glance briefiy at
the circumstances in which the modern scientific
movement originated.
Before the discovery of the telescope it was possible
to take the whole of nature as the field of philosophical
investigation. Astronomy was cosmogony. The
sphere of the fixed stars, the boundary of visible
nature, inc1uded a universe which was treated as a
whole, and the study of individual parts-of particular
stars or of the Sun or Moon-·was neglected for the
study of the motions of the system. With the same
comprehensiveness, philosophy took the whole field of
thought for its province, and astronomy and theology
20

22. were as much parts of the same subject as the crystalline
heavens and the abode of the blessed were parts of the
same spatial world.
The telescope destroyed this comfortable condition
of things. 1t annihilated the crystalline sphere, and
revealed a universe in which stars appeared to reach
out to infinity. But infinity was beyond the grasp of
finite intelligence, so that cosmogony became im-
possible. On the other hand, the telescope made
possible more detailed observation of the nearer objects
than had previously been hoped for. The inevitable
happened. Men turned from the attempt to apprehend
the whole by reason, and began to study the part by
experience. Thus modern science was born.
The history of science thereafter is a history of
increasing specialisation. He who could most rigorously
limit his field of study and substitute intensity for
extension of observation, stood the best chance of
adding to knowledge. One of the first divisions to be
made was that between measurable and non-measurable
experiences, which immediately separated the physical
sciences from the biological. The motion of a planet
could be measured; that of a bird could not: and the
great scientific achievement which culminated in
21

23. Newton's laws of mechanical motion created a rift
between physical and biological movements which
even to-day we have no prospect of c10sing up.
Of the two aspects of this great revolution-the
dependence on experience and the division of ex­
periences into groups-Swedenborg recognised only
the first. He saw more c1early than most of his con­
temporaries that philosophy must have an empirical
basis, but he was not prepared to confine his attention
within any partial field of inquiry. For this he had his
reward, and paid his penalty. Everyone knows how
Newton, with the whole conception and detailed
application of his gravitational theory complete, re­
frained from publication for sixteen years because a
wrong figure for the radius of the Earth led him to
think that the theory was not exactly verified by
measurement. 'iVhen the error was detected, the
mathematical theory was given to the world, and with
it the great conception of the universal force of gravita­
tion hinding the whole created world together into a
single system. On such a theory men could build,
and in due time came such developments as Laplace's
nebular hypothesis and Einstein's theory of relativity,
so that to-day we have a vision of a single system of
22

24. geometry comprising the history, structure and destiny
of the whole mechanical universe. Newton's theory
made this possible and, having seen it come into being,
passed out of use as a fundamental statement of
natural law.
Swedenborg's Principia is of another type than
Newton's. It is concerned with the planets and the
Sun, but not with measurements of their positions.
It deals instead with the nature of motion, into which
Newton did not inquire, and it takes account of
animal movements, magnetism, and the creation of
man. The radius of the Earth is not relevant to its
considerations; it is the quality of the causes, not the
quantity of the effects, in which it takes interest. For
such a world-view the experimental philosophy was not
ready; empirical science could only approach it slowly,
by way of exact measurement and an imperfect picture
of a universal force. But the geometrical picture to
which that imperfect one has at last led us is in essence
identical with the vision of Swedenborg. His mind,
much more truly than that of Newton, could be
described as " voyaging through strange seas of thought,
alone." To myself," said Newton, " 1 seem to haveH
been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and
23

25. diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother
pebble or a prettier shen than ordinaryt whilst the
great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.H
*
"The time is at handt
H
writes Swedenborg (The
Economy of the Animal Kingdom)t " when we may quit
the harbour and sail for the open sea. . . . But to
launch out into this subject is like embarking on a
shore1ess ocean that environs the world.H
It was the magnitude of the task that Swedenborg
undertook that prevented his ideas from guiding future
generations. Newton said that if he saw farther than
otherst it was because he stood on the shoulders of
giants. None could reach the shoulders of Swedenborg
and see beyond his horizon. In the journey towards
Wisdom there are those who bear aloft the torch of
knowledge which is as a lamp to our feett and who
calI us to walk in the path which it illumines. And
there are others who bear no torcht but point to a
star ahead. They enter thickets we cannot penetratet
and cross bridges too frail to bear our weight. We turn
from them and follow the torch-bearerst and in the
toils of the way they are forgotten; but when at
length we reach sorne vantage pointt we find their
* Memoirs ofSir Isaac Newton, by D. Brewster, vol. ii, p. 407.
24

26. flag aIready planted. Of such as these was Swedenborg.
He stands a lone figure, inaccessible, a beacon rather
than a guide. It was not his fate ta " be of actual use
ta the public at large in those matters which properly
belong ta the Royal Board." Another destiny was
reserved for him, and for his loss there was abundant
recompense. His mind reached beyond the immediate
means ta the uItimate end, and thereby made itself fit
for experiences which few are worthy to receive.

28. THE TRANSACTIONS OF
THE SWEDENBORG SOCIETY
No. 1. Swedenborg and Modern Ideas of the Universe
by HAROLD GARDINER, M.S., F.R.C.S.
No. 2. Swedenborg's Search for the Soul
by HAROLD GARDINER, M.S., F.R.C.S.
No. 3. Ultimate Reality
by the REV. L. F. HITE, A.M. (Harvard)
No. 4. Swedenborg as a Physical Scientist
by PROF. HERBERT DINGLE, D.Sc.) A.R.C.S.
Priee 1 s. eaeh, post free
Full catalogue of 8wedenborg's works unt fret on reqtust tf)
SWEDENBORG SOCIETY
20 HART STREET
LONDON, W.C. 1
l'rmud in GuaI Brirain by Th. Campjield Press, St. Albans