SWEDENBORG’S MATHEMATICAL, MECHANICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL INVESTIGATIONS.
Mathematics, especially geometry, algebra and mechanics, and astronomy in particular, were the predominating interests with Swedenborg, when, after having completed his university studies, he entered upon his first foreign journey (1710). He had at that time the good fortune to come into personal contact with (Isaac Newton?),[13] John Flamsteed[14] and Edmund Halley[15] in England, and with the renowned mathematicians Philippe de la Hire and Pierre Varrignon[16] in France, and to enter into an interchange of scientific ideas with them. And the impulses derived from teachers of such great insight and skill did not take long in manifesting themselves. In 1714 Swedenborg was able to 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, mitrailleuse, 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 publication of a periodical devoted to natural science, ›Daedalus Hyperboreus›, the first scientific periodical in Sweden, and to furnish it abundantly (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 offered 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 offered professorship in mathematics, which he feared would force him into a direction too theoretical. In this respect there were, as some of his biographers have shown, several points of similarity between Swedenborg and his patron, King Charles XII., namely, ›the unusual combination of the boldest imagination and a pronounced practical tendency›.[22] And as both were animated by the same ›burning inclination for all that is great in thought and deed›, and by the same love of the fatherland, therefore, when these two men found one another, there was an interesting cooperation. Professor Holmquist has given a very good description of this in his essay alluded to above, from which I shall here reproduce some extracts:
— — — ›But Swedenborg had also in the course of his conversation with Charles XII. advanced several new proposals which won, in part, the King’s approval. Swedenborg suggested the establishment of a company to promote the exportation of Swedish iron and tar (a suggestion later put into practice by the Iron Office), set forth his plan for an observatory in Uppsala and brought up for discussion the establishment of salt works in Sweden in order to help his country against the terrible dearth of salt during the war: all these ideas he also committed to writing in pamphlets: ’Om sättet för handelns och manufacturernas uphjelpande’, ’Memorial om Salt Siuderiers inrettning i Swerje’ and ’Om nyttan och nödvändigheten af ett Observatorii inrättande i Sverige’ (preserved in manuscript in the Diocesan Library of Linköping).[23] Of the ideas just mentioned, it was in the first place the one on salt boileries which claimed the King’s attention and which he commissioned Swedenborg to put into practice. It still remains, however, to mention the most remarkable of Swedenborg’s projects. Through Eric Benzelius he had come into possession of an old letter of Bishop Hans Brask, in which the idea of a water way from the western coast straight across Sweden is expressed. Swedenborg, inspired by this, laid before the King the suggestion for a canal from Göteborg through Lakes Vänern and Vättern to the Baltic, which aroused the King’s enthusiasm. Swedenborg was commissioned to investigate the possibilities for the realization of this gigantic undertaking. — — — Shortly after this we find him in Uddevalla investigating the possibility of establishing salt-works, in connection with which Swedenborg at once set out to construct salt-pans and other apparatus better than those in use in the defective old salt-works at Strömstad. — — — We afterwards find him again at Trollhättan, Vänern, Gullspång and Hjälmaren examining the situation for the canal and locks and finding ’all to be possible and not of such great expense as had been supposed’. Swedenborg had passed over to the modern idea of an inland canal through Hjälmaren and Mälaren directly to Stockholm.› With justice it may be said that here he gives the impression of a very sharpsighted and energetic engineer, who possessed the power of turning his thorough theoretical education to practical use.
It may thus be clearly perceived, from everything I have referred to above, how comprehensive and penetrating were the researches of Swedenborg in the mathematical (and especially the mechanical) branches of science, and what fruitful discoveries had been made by his searching eye.