Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Sidor ...
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
attention to the very gradual development of Swedenborg’s principles of
nature from 1721 to 1734, a longer period by two years than that in which
he produced (from 1734 to 1745) his great works on the human bod}’’ and
mind, in the analysis of which the principles previously developed were
constantly applied. Now, an interesting result of recent investigations in
Sweden is that even be fore 1721 the »Principia» were expressed in some
of their most striking aspects in a number of short Swedish ivorks dating
from about the year 7?jfS.269~320 In these Swedish works, several of which are
printed in the present volume, we therefore find the original conceptions
which were later expanded in the three Latin »Principia».
In the Introduction we have discus3ed the relation of Swedenborg’s
philosophy of nature to the philosophies of Descartes, Newton, and Polhem,
and pointed out that the manuscripts »De Causis Rerum»229 and »Disc ours
emellan Mechaniquen och Chymien om naturens wäsende» ,243 although in
Swedenborg’s handwriting, were probably more the result of Polhem’s
author-ship than Swedenborg’s. The relationship of these texts, now first published,
is, however, confined for the most part to Swedenborg’s Chemical, geological
and physical theories as recorded in the treatise Om Watvens Högd and in
the Prodromus and Miscellanea observata. When we come to the cosmological
theories of Swedenborg, the historical lines lead us partly to the ancient
classical writers of Greece and Rome, partly to Descartes and Newton, as
pointed out in the Introduction. Whether Swedenborg received the first
hints of his »nebular hypothesis» from Ovids Metamorphoses, or from some
other source than his own original speculations, has not yet been made
clear. Certain it is that he did not express the theory in the fragment
En vy theorie om jordens af’st ann ande,269 although it may have been in his mind
then, for in discussing the decreasing motion of the earth and planets (a
theory developed in our times by G. H. Darwin), the question of the
original planetary and solar chaos of course lay near at hand. Be that as it
may, in a work of considerably later date, to judge from the pronounced
difference in the handwriting, the theory of the origin of the earth and
planets from their »first lump» is clearly expressed in the opening words of
the preface.28’
In the printed work,299 which, after some revision and expansion, was
published at Skara in 1718, the »lump» has become a »Chaos», reminding
us of the chapter in the Principia of 1734 De Chao universali solis et
planet-arum. In this theory Swedenborg separates himself from the cosmological
thpories existing before his time and establishes the »nebular hypothesis»,
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
