review – Page 2 – The Swedenborg Scientific Association

Book Review: The Scientific Adventure

This book is a collection of essays on the history and philosophy of science by an eminent astrophysicist who is now Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College, London. The book is divided into two sections: Historical Essays (9), and Philosophical Essays (10). All have been selected by the author from his previous writings and lectures. In his Preface, Professor Dingle says: “The order of the chapters is not chronological, nor is there usually any direct connecting link between one chapter and the next. The unity of the book is to be found in its viewpoint, and such value as it may have arises from the degree to which it succeeds in making the advantages of that viewpoint clear.”

Book Review: Science and Humanism

This small book raises many questions in the mind of a reader of the works of Swedenborg. Like many other recent books written by scientists for laymen, it expresses a deep unrest among the scientists of today. Fifty years ago the scientist was secure in his belief that matter was fundamental: that it behaved according to fixed laws as a result of forces in the surroundings. He was confident that while as yet he did not know all the laws, still they were knowable. Further research would bring him step by step nearer to a complete understanding of the operation of nature.

Book Review: Man, the Chemical Machine

This book is written by a biochemist teacher-research worker with the purpose of describing in popular terms what is known today about the chemical structure and chemical mechanism of living things, particularly the human body. Although it is not the only book of its kind, as the book jacket says, or even the best, Man, the Chemical Machine is a fairly interesting account of the chemistry of the living body, as known to modern science.

Book Review: The Golden Bough

To review a book which had its genesis over a half-century ago may seem a worthless task. However, important books are not published every day, nor classics every year. Whether The Golden Bough fits the latter category must wait for time to tell; but if the judgment of John Dewey, Charles Beard, and Edward Weeks be at all definitive, here is one of the most important books of the last seventy-five years.

Reviews

Book Review: Wealden Iron by the Wealden Iron Research Group

What is of particular interest about this is that it includes an article titled “Swedenborg’s Description of English Iron-making” by Jeremy Hodgkinson and Anne Dalton

Book Review: The Listening Threads: The Formal Cosmology of Emanuel Swedenborg by Norman Newton

The work of N. Newton is a further confirmation of the vitality of Swedenborgian philosophical reflection, which is difficult to assimilate into a systematic type of thought and which, for this very reason, does not cease to give rise to new considerations and ideas and provides reasons and stimuli destined to be taken up in even recent contexts which are both philosophical and scientific as well as literary.

Book Review: Tunnel to Eternity by Leon Rhodes

Book Review: The Code of Concord: Emerson’s Search for Universal Laws by Anders Hallengren

As one concludes a reading of Anders Hallengren’s lengthy and absorbing study of Ralph Waldo Emerson,1 the book’s subtitle would appear to be somewhat misleading. For the evidence that the author amasses throughout the work suggests that what Emerson searched for was not so much universal laws. Beneath many of his more radical or unorthodox pronouncements, Emerson was too much the traditionalist to be seduced by a solipsistic or an antinomian approach to the conduct of life. What Emerson seemed to be searching for was some understanding of the ways that mortals apprehended that universal laws existed. What sanctions did those laws impose upon us?

Book Review: Swedenborg’s Secret by Lars Berquist

Swedenborg’s Secret is an important new biography of Swedenborg that was well received by the Swedish press when originally published there in 1999. Written by the Swedish diplomat Lars Bergquist, it has been translated into English and published by the Swedenborg Society in 2005. The author relates in the acknowledgements that some of the material has been adapted for an international audience, but upon examination the changes appear to be minor. This is the second book that Bergquist has written about Swedenborg. In 1989 he published Swedenborg’s Dream Diary in Sweden. It was translated by Anders Hallengren and published by the Swedenborg Foundation in 2001.

Article Type: review