SWEDENBORG’S CHEMISTRY*
Lewis F. Hite†
Introduction
In 1721, Swedenborg published, under the title Prodromus Principiorum
Rerum Naturalium, sive Novorum Testaminum Chymiam et Physicam
Experimentalem Geometrice Explicandi(A Forecast of the Principles of Natural
Things or of New Attempts to explain Chemistry and Experimental
Physics by Geometry), some of the results of his studies, observations, and
experiments in the field of chemistry and physics up to this date.
We have seen that after his return from his first trip abroad, in the
summer of 1715, he devoted himself extensively as well as intensely to
observation and study in those fields of nature which were more directly
related to his business as a civil and mining engineer. His unbounded
intellectual interests and his insatiable thirst for knowledge, however, led
him inevitably and deliberately into the whole body of the physical sciences.
Besides his contributions to the Daedalus Hyperboreus, within the
period of 1716 to 1719, he wrote on a great variety of subjects, physical,
mathematical, and professional; at the same time, he devoted himself
increasingly to systematic studies in the Philosophy of Nature. It seems
that he devoted the latter part of this period and most of the year 1720 to
writing out the results of his studies in what he refers to as his Principles.
There is little record of his activities at this time; but in a letter from
Brunsbo, dated May 2, 1720, he says :
* Presidential Address given by Rev. L.F. Hite at the Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the
Swedenborg Scientific Association held at Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, on Monday, June 10,
1929. Reprinted from The New Philosophy vol. XXXII §§ 1–4 (Jan.–Oct. 1929): 1–16.
† Lewis Field Hite was, for a long time, editor of New Church Review, and professor of
philosophy for many years at the New Church Theological School, Cambridge, Mass.
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