by Edward F. Allen
Recently, on an inside page of a newspaper, there was a small article headlined “Scientists transmute Gold into Purest Form of Mercury” (Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Sept. 20, 1957). This article had hardly any effect on people; its newsworthiness is shown by the fact that it was printed on page 32!However, it recalled to the writer that in Miscellaneous Observations there is a brief article “Reasons showing the impossibility of transmuting Metals, especially into Gold.” As the work was published in 1722, the article is an example of some of Swedenborg’s earliest studies in science.
by Hugo Lj. Odhner
In his valuable studies of Space published in the New Philosophy for 1957, Dr. C. R. Pendleton is particularly concerned to explain the nature of spiritual substance in such a way as to make it easier to understand how the spatial matter of the natural world could have been created out of spiritual substances. The solution he suggests is that spiritual substance also has a trace of spatial qualities—in the form of “tridimensionality,” which, he considers, is not space in the ordinary sense (pages 162, 171, 226).
by Douglas M. Taylor
The philosophic preparations for Christianity began with the gathering together by Enoch of the doctrinals of the Most Ancient Church. It is stated in the Writings that the knowledge of these doctrinals—which included, among other things, the science of correspondences—was scattered throughout the whole of the area surrounding Canaan.
