Emanuel Swedenborg's investigations in natural science and the basis for his statements concerning the fuctions of the brain / by Martin Ramström.

  • Ramström, Martin, 1861-1930.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Emanuel Swedenborg's investigations in natural science and the basis for his statements concerning the fuctions of the brain / by Martin Ramström. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    send home accounts of a great many mechanical inventions which he had made and the »correctness of which he proved by mathematical and algebraical calculations.»17 As examples of these discoveries may be mentioned his flying machine,18 submarine boat, steam engine, mitraill- euse, sluice constructions, etc.17 After his return to Sweden he found opportunities of putting into practice some of these projects, when (in 1716) he was appointed assessor extraordinary in the College of Mines and ordered to assist Chr. Polhem >with the construction of his buildings and inventions *. But he was rich in ideas and quick-witted enough to be able, together with these official duties, to plan and set on foot the pub- lication of a periodical devoted to natural science, »Daedalus Hyper- boreus», the first scientific periodical in Sweden, and to furnish it abun- dantly (during the years 1716—1718) with valuable articles concerning new inventions, projects and problems for scientific investigations and experiments,19 In the year 1718 he has completed a new method of reckoning with the number 8 as the base; and the following year he publishes a still better * Proposal to divide our money and measures, so that the calculation would be easy and all fractions be abolished*, and this system is nothing less than the Decimal system!20 He also published during these years an ingenious method of determining the longitude by means of the moon, a problem upon which the learned had at that time been engaged for several years.21 Swedenborg thus succeeded in penetrating very deeply into the mathematical and mechanical sciences, and therefore at first it must arouse astonishment that he did not accept the professor’s chair in mathematics at Uppsala University when this was offerred him. He wished for freedom to study in other departments also. And, as we shall see, he soon turned his interest in another direction, namely to geology. However, it was also a characteristic in Swedenborg, worthy of admiration, that in spite of his deep penetration into the sciences and the bold ideas of his creative genius, he nevertheless strove, at the same time, to retain contact with practical life and there cause the results of his investigations to bear fruit. It was also this purpose which to a great extent influenced him not to accept the offerred professorship in