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EMANUEL SWEDENBORG AS A COSMOLOGIST1
BY SVANTE ARRHENIUS.
The present volume of Swederborg’s scientific works contains his
perhaps most highly valued work »Principia rerum naturalium».2 In
this work he attempts to give a philosophical presentation of what we
might call molecular structure. Now since Swederborg considered
every-thing in the world, the small as well as the great, to be constructed
according to the same fundamental principles, he has also in this work
presented his views concerning the structure of the solar and world systems,
which views have won considerable praise for the reason that the
planets are described as having gone forth from the sun by means of
a kind of centrifugal expulsion, a view which subsequently became
classical in the works of Buffon, Kant and especially of Laplace. We
also find in Swedenborg’s Principia reflections concerning the relation
of the solar system to the milky way which remind us very much of
the later expressions of Wright, Kart and Lambert. In this
Introduction Swedenborg’s cosmology and physics as set forth in the Principia
1 Translated by Alfred H. Stroh from the original Swedish and revised by the
author. Now reprinted from the Introduction to Vol. II. of the edition of
Swedenborg’s scientific texts under publication by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at Stockholm: Emanuel Swedenborg, Opera quaedam aut inedita aut obsoleta de rebus naturalihus, nunc edita sub auspiciis Regiae Academiae Scientiarum Suecicae, II.,
Cosmologica, introductionem adiunxit Svante Arrhenius, edidit Alfred H. Stroh.
Holmiae, ex officina Aftonbladet, 1908. Four plates from Part III. of Swedenborg’s
Principia of 1734, illustrating his theories of the development of the solar system and of the constitution of matter, are reproduced at the close of this contribution.
2 In 1721 Swedenborg published at Amsterdam a Prodromus Principiorum rerum
naturalium, reprinted in Vol. III. of this series. The Principia rerum naturalium,
printed in the present volume,1-191 is in all probability the manuscript work referred to by Swedenborg in a letter dated Nov. 27, 1729, printed in Vol. I.321 In 1734 Swedenborg published at Dresden and Leipsic three folio volumes entitled Opera
Philosophica et Mineralia, the first volume being his final Principia rerum naturalium.
A summary of the final Principia, left in manuscript by Swedenborg, is printed in the
present volume,207—262 and also the entire Third Part of the Principia of 1734. 263—368
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