SWEDENBORG or SWEDBERG, EMANUEL (1688— 1772), Swedish scientist, philosopher and theologian, was born at Stockholm on Jan. 29. His father, Dr. Jesper Swedberg, subsequently professor of theology at Uppsala and bishop of Skara, was under suspicion of heterodoxy, as he placed more emphasis on the cardinal virtues of faith, love and communion with God than on dogma. On completing his university course at Uppsala, in 171o, Emanuel travelled in England, Holland, France and Germany, studying natural philosophy and writing Latin verses, a collection of which he published in 171o. In 1715 he returned to Uppsala, devoting himself to natural science and engineering. From 1716 to 1718 he published a scientific periodi cal, Daedalus hyperboreus, a record of mechanical and mathe matical inventions and discoveries. In 1716 Charles XII. ap pointed him assessor-extraordinary on the Swedish board of mines. Two years later he distinguished himself at the siege of Frederikshall by the invention of machines for the transport of boats overland from Stromstadt to Iddefjord, a distance of 14 m. At the death of Charles XII. Queen Ulrica gave him a patent of nobility, by which his name was changed from Swedberg to Swe denborg, the "en" corresponding to the German "von." In the Swedish House of Nobles he spoke on economic subjects—the currency, the decimal system, the balance of trade and the liquor laws (where he was the pioneer of the Gothenburg system). He strongly opposed a bill for increasing the power of the crown. The next years were devoted to his official duties, which involved the visitation of the Swedish, Saxon, Bohemian and Austrian mines. In 1724 he declined the chair of mathematics in the uni versity of Uppsala, on the ground that it was a mistake for mathe maticians to be limited to theory. As early as 1721 he was seeking a scientific explanation of the universe, when he published his Prodrornus principiorum rerum naturalium, and had already written his Principia in its first form. In 1734 appeared in three volumes Opera philosophica et mineralia, the first volume (his Principia) containing his view of the first principles of the uni verse, predicting the nebular hypothesis and some of the modern ideas on the atom. The other volumes dealt with (a) iron and steel, (b) copper and brass, their smelting, conversion and assay ing, and chemical experiments thereon.
Swedenborg's voluminous writings were not properly collected and examined until towards the end of the 19th century; it was then seen that in almost every department of scientific activity he was ahead of his time. His work on palaeontology shows him
the predecessor of all the Scandinavian geologists. He was also a great physicist and had arrived at the nebular hypothesis theory of the formation of the planets and the sun long before Kant and Laplace ; he wrote a lucid account of the phenomena of phos phorescence, and adduced a molecular magnetic theory which an ticipated some of the chief features of modern hypotheses. The French chemist, Dumas, credits him with the first attempt to establish a system of crystallography. He was the first to employ mercury for the air-pump, and devised a method of determining longitude at sea by observations of the moon among the stars.
In 1734 he published Prodrornus philosophiae ratiocinantis de infinito et causa finali creationis, which treats of the relation of the finite to the infinite, and of the soul to the body, seeking to establish a nexus in each case as a means of overcoming the diffi culty of their relation. From this time he applied himself to dis covering the nature of soul and spirit by means of anatomical studies. He travelled in Germany, France and Italy, in search of anatomical knowledge and, as a result, published his Oeconomia regni animalis (London, 174o-41) and Regnum animale (The Hague, London, In no field were Swedenborg's researches more noteworthy than in physiological science. In 1901, Max Neuberger of Vienna called attention to certain an ticipations of modern views made by Swedenborg in relation to the functions of the brain, and the university of Vienna appealed to the Royal Swedish Academy for a complete issue of the scientific treatises. Swedenborg showed (15o years before any other scientist) that the motion of the brain was synchronous with the respiration and not with the action of the heart and the circulation of the blood, a discovery the full bearings of which are still unrealized. He arrived at the modern conception of the activity of the brain as the combined activity of its individual cells. The cerebral cortex, and, more definitely, the cortical ele ments (nerve cells), formed the seat of the activity of the soul, and were ordered into departments according to various func tions. His views as to the physiological functions of the spinal cord are in agreement with recent research, and he anticipated modern research on the functions of the ductless glands.