Reprinted from the festival publication of the University of Uppsala on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Royal Society of Sciences of Uppsala and of the unveiling of the sarcophagus of Emanuel Swedenborg in the cathedral of Uppsala. November 19th, 1910. EMANUEL SWEDENBORG’S INVESTIGATIONS IN NATURAL SCIENCE AND THE BASIS FOR HIS STATEMENTS CONCERNING THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN BY MARTIN RAMSTRÖM UNIVERSITY OF UPPSALA 1910 UPPSALA ALMQVIST & WIKSELL, PRINTING CO., LTD. 1910...

In recent times Emanuel Swedenborg has, on many sides, been the object of a continually increasing interest, and year after year has attention been called to the manysided works of his life. In former times he was known almost exclusively through his religious writings. But it has gradually come to light that he was also an investigating genius of the first rank, who opened new paths in several branches of the natural sciences and made wonderful discoveries. Thus, by way of illustration, Profess

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 i

Swedenborg ’s comprehensive interest now turned itself to new fields of work: to geology , mineralogy , chemistry , physics and finally to cosmology , without giving up his first subject, mathematics . And he also now exhibited the same thoroughness as before, beginning with examinations, experiments and observations, partly original, but also collected from predecessors. For he says: ›It seems to me that an infinite mass of completed experiments is a good ground to build upon, to make the troub

After Swedenborg had so thoroughly searched through and speculated upon inorganic nature, he turns himself to the organic . He breaks away from all other work, travels abroad, and throws himself with intense zeal into anatomical and physiological studies. These researches were, for the most part, carried on in the Netherlands, France, and especially in Italy, where he remained for nearly a year. After five years he was ready with his first work in this field, the large, famous › Œconomia Regni A

With regard to the function of the brain, Swedenborg , in the first place, made the distinction that the cerebrum regulates the psychic, and the cerebellum the vegetative functions. Many different opinions prevailed in Swedenborg ’s time concerning this question. Some investigators considered that the vegetative as well as the psychical functions stood under the direct control of the cerebrum; others that the centres of vegetative life were separated from those of psychic life and had not , like

That the sensory activity of the soul has its centres in the cerebrum was in Swedenborg ’s time considered quite certain, but it was not so certain as to just what part of the brain it was in which the soul’s activity arose. It is well known that the philosopher Descartes († 1650) had supposed that the glandula pinealis (pineal gland) was the seat of the soul, and that the conscious perceptions came into being in this gland and in the central ventricle of the brain, the › third ventricle ›, from

Swedenborg also placed the centres of the soul’s motor activity in the cerebral cortex (See Œc. R. A., No. 127, etc.). I have not been able to find anything of this kind even hinted at in the antecedent literature. We are reminded of how preceding authors, who made an attempt at some kind of localization of the origin of motion, in most cases placed this in the medulla of the brain, as for example the Bartholins ; [67] and also Boerhaave . [68] And as we have just heard, Haller still held the sa

But Swedenborg , as is well known, did not stop here. The cerebral cortex certainly constituted a whole which transformed the sensations into thoughts and determinations, but all the regions of the cortex were not of the same degree: some ruled the higher, others the lower functions, thus also containing subdivisions, in some of which the sense-impressions were received, in others from which the motor impulses proceeded. (See ›The Brain›, Nos. 66, 68, 71, 88, 98, 100, 102, etc.). This conception

But Swedenborg was not satisfied with knowing only that the psychical functions arise within certain regions of the cortex of the large anterior region of the cerebrum: but he continued his search for their inmost origin, and thus he came to the conviction that the psychical processes in reality result from the joint work which is performed by the minute cortical elements , which Swedenborg called › Sphaerulae › or › Cerebellula ›, that is, the same bodies which we now call the cortical nerve-ce

I hereby conclude my presentation of the grounds upon which Swedenborg appears to have founded his doctrine of the cerebral cortex as the seat of the soul’s activity. I. It has here been my endeavour to show, that his first general statement that the centres of the psychical functions are to be found in the cortex was a conclusion, which he derived from three premises, secured in different ways: The 1st premise was a conclusion drawn from the clinical observations, post mortem discoveries and re

[2] In an address before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at Stockholm in connection with a reference to Swedenborg ’s work: ›De Cerebro›, which had just appeared in the English translation by Dr. Rudolf Tafel ; See Gustaf Retzius : Op. cit. p. VI. and Alfred H. Stroh : Op. cit. p. 11. [3] See an address of Max Neuburger concerning ›Swedenborg’s Beziehungen zur Gehirnphysiologie›, delivered before the ›Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte›, Hamburg, 1901. [4] See the article by C.