Swedenborg's Lunars
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 71; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00033790.2013.791226
ISSN1464-505X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Astronomy and Related Studies
ResumoSummaryThe celebrated Swedish natural philosopher and visionary theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) devoted major efforts to the establishment of a reliable method for the determination of longitude at sea. He first formulated a method, based on the astronomical observation of lunar position, while in London in 1710–12. He issued various versions of the method, both in Latin and in Swedish, throughout his career. In 1766, at the age of 78, he presented his scheme for judgment by the Board of Longitude in London. The rich archive of Swedenborg's career allows an unusually detailed historical analysis of his longitude project, an analysis rather better documented than that available for the host of contemporary projectors who launched longitude schemes, submitted their proposals to the Board of Longitude, and have too often been ignored or dismissed by historians. This analysis uses the longitude work to illuminate key aspects of Swedenborg's wider enterprises, including his scheme to set up an astronomical observatory in southern Sweden to be devoted to lunar and stellar observation, his complex attitude to astronomical and magnetic cosmology, and his attempt to fit the notion of longitude into his visionary world-view. Swedenborg's programme also helps make better sense of the metropolitan and international networks of diplomatic and natural philosophical communication in which the longitude schemes were developed and judged. It emerges that his longitude method owed much to the established principles of earlier Baroque and Jesuit natural philosophy while his mature cosmology sought a rational and enlightened model of the universe. AcknowledgementsResearch for this essay was conducted as part of the AHRC project: The Board of Longitude 1714–1828: Science, innovation and empire in the Georgian world. Thanks to the project members: Alexi Baker, Katy Barrett, Richard Dunn, Rebekah Higgitt, Eoin Phillips, Nicky Reeves and Sophie Waring. Thanks also for their invaluable aid to the referees, as well as Hjalmar Fors, Jacob Orrje, James Wilson and Huib Zuidervaart.Notes1 Alfred Acton, Life of Swedenborg (Bryn Athyn, 1958), 125.2 RGO MSS 14/5 fol. 87. Maskelyne's judgment was first noticed in Wertha Pendleton Cole, ‘Swedenborg's work on longitude’, The new philosophy, 36 (1933), 169–78 (177).3 Emanuel Swedenborg, Wisdom of Angels concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom (London, 1788), 57–8; Geoffrey Keynes (ed.), William Blake: complete writings (Oxford, 1966), 92; Clark Garrett, ‘Swedenborg and the mystical enlightenment in eighteenth century England’, Journal of the history of ideas, 45 (1984), 67–81.4 R.L.Tafel (ed.), Documents concerning the life and character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2 vols. (London, 1875), I, 218.5 Owen Gingerich, ‘Cranks and opportunists: ‘nutty’ solutions to the longitude problem’, in The quest for longitude, edited by William J. H. Andrewes (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 133–48. For longitude as a problem of orientation, see David Dúner, The natural philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg: a study in the conceptual metaphors of the mechanistic world-view (Dordrecht, 2013), 50–7.6 Alfred Acton (ed.), Letters and memorials of Emanuel Swedenborg (Bryn Athyn, 1948), 3.7 Lars Engwall, ‘From Collegium Curiosorum to Royal Society’, in Scholars in Action: Past-Present-Future, edited by Lars Engwall (Uppsala, 2012), 17–27 (18–19).8 Ernst Benz, Emanuel Swedenborg: visionary savant in the Age of Reason (West Chester, PA, 2002), 29–44, and Francesca Maria Crasta, La filosofia della natura di Emanuel Swedenborg (Milan, 1999), 33–6, describe these fights as part of Swedenborg's milieu in London.9 Marsha Keith Schuchard, Emanuel Swedenborg: secret agent on Earth and in heaven (Leiden, 2011), 38.10 James A. Bennett, ‘Shopping for instruments in Paris and London’, in Merchants and marvels, edited by Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (London, 2002), 370–95 (374–5). For the London practical experimental scene at this period, see Larry Stewart, The rise of public science (Cambridge, 1992), 166–75. For a very comparable Swedish tour of London instrument shops, clubs and observatories by the astronomer Bengt Ferrner in 1759–60, see Jacob Orrje, Navigating the neighbourhoods of longitude (M Phil dissertation, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, 2011).11 J.E.B.Mayor (ed.), Cambridge under Queen Anne (Cambridge, 1911), 356–7, 361–2, 366–7, 404–5.12 Mayor (Footnotenote 11), 351.13 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 212, 216.14 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 208.15 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 208, 219; for the library catalogue see Lars Bergquist, Swedenborg's secret: a biography (London, 2005), 492.16 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 14; Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 216, 219.17 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 210.18 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 225.19 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 211.20 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 214.21 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 224–5. For Swedenborg and Savery, see Svante Lindqvist, Technology on trial: the introduction of steam power technology into Sweden, 1715–1736 (Uppsala, 1984), 119.22 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 225. For Leibniz's attack in May 1712 and Newton's furious response see A.R.Hall, Philosophers at war: the quarrel between Newton and Leibniz (Cambridge, 1980), 184.23 [Per Elvius], De longitudine geographica dissertatio … pro gradu … Andreas Duraeus (Uppsala, 1710), 12, 19–21, 26–30.24 Mayor, Cambridge, 392.25 Edmond Halley, ‘Design and use of the foregoing observations’, in Thomas Streete, Astronomia Carolina, 2nd ed. (London, 1710), appendix, 67–70. The work and its appendix on longitude were advertised in The Post Man on 23 February 1710.26 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 220.27 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 211; Alan Cook, Edmond Halley (Oxford, 1998), 124.28 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 212.29 A.J.Turner, ‘In the wake of the Act, but mainly before’, in Andrewes (Footnotenote 5), 116–27 (120); Flamsteed to Burchett, 5 December 1705, in Eric Forbes, Lesley Murdin and Frances Willmoth (eds.), Correspondence of John Flamsteed, 3 vols (Bristol, 1995–2002), III, 265.30 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 211.31 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 212–13. Elvius' longitude calculations from eclipse observations made at Bologna and Uppsala in October 1706 are in Elvius (Footnotenote 23), 29.32 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 215.33 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 575.34 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 219. For the redesign of these devices and Hooke's interest in telescopic sights, see J.A.Bennett, ‘Flamsteed's career in astronomy’, in Flamsteed's stars, edited by Frances Willmoth (Woodbridge, 1997), 17–30 (25–9).35 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 218.36 Acton (Footnotenote 6), 36; Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 228. For Halley's ownership of Swedenborg's works see Schuchard (Footnotenote 9), 62; for Swedenborg's use of Halley's magnetic chart see Emanuel Swedenborg, The Principia, edited by Augustus Clissold, 2 vols (London, 1846), II, 141–3. For Halley's magnetic mapping see Patricia Fara, Sympathetic attractions (Princeton, 1996), 109–12.37 Simon Schaffer, ‘Halley's atheism and the end of the world’, Notes and records of the Royal Society 32 (1977), 17–40. The theories of the shape of the Earth promoted by Burnet and Newton are discussed briefly and dismissed in [Elvius] (Footnotenote 23), 2–3.38 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 223.39 A.R.Hall and Laura Tilling (eds.), Correspondence of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1976), VI, 212 and Correspondence of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1977), VII, 172.40 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 52.41 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 221.42 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 227. Whiston's advertisement appeared in the Guardian on 14 July 1713: see Stewart (Footnotenote 10), 185–6.43 Derek Howse, ‘The lunar distance method for longitude’, in Andrewes (Footnotenote 5), 149–61 (151–2).44 Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Rome, 1646), 552–3; Michael John Gorman, ‘The angel and the compass: Athanasius Kircher's magnetic geography’, in Athanasius Kircher, edited by Paula Findlen (New York, 2004), 239–59.45 Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Almagestum Novum (Bologna, 1651), 608–12 and Riccioli, Geographiae et hydrologiae reformatae (Bologna, 1659), 325–63. Riccioli mainly relied for his knowledge of navigation methods on Robert Dudley, Dall'arcana del mare (Florence, 1645–6), book 1, a work by an English émigré who became naval commander for the Medici regime in Tuscany.46 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 591–2.47 [Elvius] (Footnotenote 23), 18–9; N. V. E. Nordenmark, ‘Swedenborg och Longitudproblemet, med anledning av ett nyfunnet brev från Wargentin’, Lychnos (1944–5), 243–8 (248).48 Emanuel Swedenborg, ‘A new method of finding the longitudes of places’ (1721), translated in Swedenborg, Some specimens of a work on the principles of chemistry, edited by Charles Edward Strutt (Boston, 1847), 213–27 (218).49 Swedenborg (Footnotenote 48), 215; Acton (Footnotenote 1), 125.50 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 126; Cole (Footnotenote 2), 172–3.51 Swedenborg (Footnotenote 48), 226.52 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 125.53 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 597.54 Huib Zuidervaart, Telescopes from Leiden Observatory and Other Collections, 1656–1859: a descriptive catalogue (Leiden, 2007), 26. The earlier Blaeu instrument is described in Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland (Ulm, 1754), 3, 396.55 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 228.56 Acton (Footnotenote 6), 49. For Varignon, see Benz (Footnotenote 8), 52–3; Hall (Footnotenote 22), 84, 186; Newton (Footnotenote 39), VI, 42, 188.57 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 227.58 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 233.59 For the effects of the Prize on the pamphleteers, see Stewart (Footnotenote 10), 198–202; the ‘ferment of activity in longitude research’ in the twenty years before 1714 is described in Turner (Footnotenote 29), 122.60 Sebastiano Ricci, The new method proposed by Segnior Dorotheo Alimari to discover the longitude (London, 1714) and Dorotheo Alimari, Longitudinis aut terra aut mari investiganda methodus (London, 1715); Acton (Footnotenote 6), 110. For Ricci in England see Francis Haskell, Patrons and painters, rev. edn. (New Haven, 1980), 279–80. For Flamsteed against Alimari see Flamsteed to Sharp, 22 October 1714, in Forbes et al. (Footnotenote 29), III, 712.61 Newton (Footnotenote 39), VII, 342–4; Jim Bennett, ‘Catadioptrics and commerce in eighteenth-century London’, History of science 44 (2006), 247–78 (263).62 Logan to Halley, 25 May 1732, Royal Society MS EL/L6/59; Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 345.63 Acton (Footnotenote 6), 59.64 Lindqvist (Footnotenote 21), 158–63; David Duner, ‘Daedalus of the North: Swedenborg's mentor Christopher Polhem’, The new philosophy (July–December 2010), 1077–98.65 Hjalmar Fors, ‘Occult traditions and enlightened science: the Swedish Board of Mines as an intellectual environment’, in Chymists and chymistry: studies in the history of alchemy and early modern chemistry, edited by L. Principe (Sagamore Beach, 2007), 239–52; Lindqvist (Footnotenote 21), 128–30, 194–7. For Triewald's adoption of the English model of philosophical entrepreneurship, see also Stewart (Footnotenote 10), 362–3. For Swedish cameralism in the cases of Polhem and Linnaeus (who was Swedenborg's cousin), see Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: nature and nation (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 102–5 and for Swedenborg's appointment as assessor see Jane Williams-Hogan, ‘Swedenborg's career on the Board of Mines: the world of uses’, The new philosophy (January–June 2010), 981–1015 (991–8).66 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 271.67 Sten Lindroth, ‘Anders Celsius et l'observatoire d'Upsal’, in Lindroth, Les chemins du savoir en Suède, edited by Jean-François Battail (Dordrecht, 1988), 111–20 (111).68 Acton (Footnotenote 6), 66; for his reverie on the observatory site see Swedenborg, ‘On the height of water’, in Scientific and philosophical treatises, 2nd ed., edited by A.H.Stroh and William Ross Wolfenden (Bryn Athyn, 1992), part 1, 17–50, 20–1.69 Acton (Footnotenote 6), 65; Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I,257; Lindroth (Footnotenote 67), 113.70 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 259, 263.71 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), II, part 2: 198; Crasta (Footnotenote 8), 36 n.28.72 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 125–6.73 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 281, 284–5.74 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 301–3.75 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 233–4; Acta literaria sueciae (April/June 1720), 27–33; Neue Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen (2 June 1721), 345–7.76 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 238–40; Acta literaria Sueciae (July-September 1721), 209–11; Neue Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen (8 May 1722), 418–20; Acta eruditorum (May 1722), 266–68.77 Conrad Quensel, Acta literaria Sueciae (January–March 1722), 270; Acton (Footnotenote 1), 256; Cole (Footnotenote 2), 175–6.78 Crasta (Footnotenote 8), 43–6; Friedemann Stengel, Aufklärung bis zum Himmel: Emanuel Swedenborg im Kontext der Theologie und Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 2011), 71–6. For Rudbeck see G. Eriksson, The Atlantic vision: Olaus Rudbeck and Baroque science (Canton, MA, 1994), 50 and Swedenborg (Footnotenote 68), 47.79 The early essay is in L.H.Odner, ‘A new theory about the retardation of the Earth’, The new philosophy 52, 2 (1950), 43–56.80 Benz (Footnotenote 8), 113–4; Emanuel Swedenborg, The motion and position of the Earth and planets, edited by L.P. Ford (London, 1900) and Swedenborg (Footnotenote 68), 45–6 on the change of the Earth's shape and the Deluge.81 Acton (Footnotenote 1), 233.82 Acton (Footnotenote 6), 220–3; Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 308–12; for Swinden see D.P.Walker, The decline of Hell (London, 1964), 39–40.83 Swedenborg (Footnotenote 36), II, 104–13, 141–3; Benz (Footnotenote 8), 121–2; Stengel (Footnotenote 78), 104–6.84 For magnetic methods in the wake of the 1714 Longitude Act, see Fara (Footnotenote 36), 215–7. For Strömer's speech see Orrje (Footnotenote 10), 9.85 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 571. See George Graham, ‘An account of the observations made of the horizontal needle at London’, Philosophical transactions 33 (1724), 96–108 (99).86 Lindroth (Footnotenote 67), 115–8; Olov Amelin, ‘Daniel Ekström, maker of scientific instruments in eighteenth century Sweden’, in Proceedings of the eleventh International Scientific Instrument Symposium, edited by G.Dragoni, A.McConnell and G. l'E. Turner (Bologna, 1994), 81–3. For Celsius and Graham's instruments, see Rob Iliffe, ‘“Aplattiseur du monde et de Cassini”: Maupertuis, precision measurement and the shape of the Earth in the 1730s’, History of science 31 (1993), 335–75 (344, 351); Mary Terrall, The man who flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the sciences in the Enlightenment (Chicago, 2002), 102–6, 141; Nicky Reeves, Constructing an instrument: Nevil Maskelyne and the zenith sector (Cambridge University PhD thesis, 2008), 29, 51, 195. For Celsius, Wargentin and the imperatives of measurement and longitude, see Sven Widmalm, ‘Astronomy as military science: the case of Sweden’, in The heavens on earth, edited by David Aubin, Charlotte Bigg and Otto Sibum (Durham, NC, 2010), 174–98 (175).87 Anders Celsius, ‘Anmerkungen über die stündlichen Veränderungen der Magnetnadel in ihrer Abweichung’ and ‘Von der Misweisung oder Abweichung der Magnetnadel’, Abhandlungen der Königliche Schwedischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1740, pb. 1749), part 2, 45–48, 161–4 (45, 164); Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 570. For Celsius's attack see Stengel (Footnotenote 78), 111–3.88 Theobald's review is in Royal Society MS RBO 21/16, fols. 81–101; see John H. Appleby, ‘James Theobald, merchant and natural historian’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 50 (1996), 179–89 (182).89 Schuchard (Footnotenote 9), 299, 363–4, 383–5; Mortimer's praise of Swedenborg's metallurgical work is in Johann Cramer, Elements of the art of assaying metals, edited by Cromwell Mortimer (London, 1741), 427; Swedenborg's ‘Some indications of the Deluge in Sweden’ [a version of a 1721 letter to van Melle] is translated in Acta Germanica, or the literary memoirs of Germany (London, 1742), 66–8. Swedenborg's presence at the Royal Society is in Royal Society MS JBC 18:251 (24 May 1744), 369 (28 February 1745), and 374 (7 March 1745).90 Folkes' Copley medal speech, 30 November 1749, is in Royal Society JBC 20: 181–96.91 Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 593; Orrje (Footnotenote 10), 23–4.92 Schuchard (Footnotenote 9), 616; Anthony Randall, ‘The timekeeper that won the Longitude Prize’, in Andrewes (Footnotenote 5), 236–54 (250).93 Nordenmark (Footnotenote 47), 248. See the English version of Wargentin's July 1766 letter to Maskelyne, ‘A new method of determining the longitude of places from observations of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites’, in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society abridged, edited by Charles Hutton, George Shaw and Richard Pearson (London, 1809), XII, 352–5. For Wargentin's astronomical inventory at Stockholm, see Gunnar Pipping, The chamber of physics, 2nd ed. (Stockholm, 1991), 22–6.94 For distribution of the new edition see Tafel (Footnotenote 4), 2, part I, 243. The Board minutes are RGO MS 14/5, fols. 68–9 (24 May 1766). For the Greenwich trials in 1766 see Jim Bennett, ‘The travels and trials of Mr Harrison's timekeeper’, in Instruments, travel and science, edited by Marie-Noelle Bourguet, Christian Licoppe and H.Otto Sibum (London, 2002), 75–95 (89–91). Swedenborg's description of his presentation is Tafel (Footnotenote 4), I, 592–3.95 RGO MSS 14/5 fol. 87.96 Acton (Footnotenote 6), 634–8; Cole (Footnotenote 2), 176–7. A thousand copies of the Nautical almanac for 1767 appeared in early January 1767 with a 1766 imprint: Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne (Cambridge, 1989), 86.97 Schuchard (Footnotenote 9), 583, 590–1, 676. The record of Swedenborg's publications at the Royal Society is in Philosophical transactions 59 (1769), xviii.98 Swedenborg (Footnotenote 3), 314–5.99 Swedenborg (Footnotenote 3), 67.100 Emanuel Swedenborg, Spiritual diary, edited by James F. Buss, 5 vols. (London, 1902), V, 193. For Newton and the angels, see Simon Schaffer, ‘Newtonian angels’, in Conversations with angels, edited by Joad Raymond (London, 2011), 90–122 (94–5).101 Swedenborg (Footnotenote 3), 59. For the Latin original, see Johann Tafel (ed.), Sapientia angelica de divino amore et de divina sapientia (Stuttgart, 1843), 27 (part 1 para. 27). The notion of spiritual longitude was already developed in the 1750s in Swedenborg, Arcana coelestia, edited by John Faulkner Potts (New York, 1938), XI, 396–7 (para 9487) and is discussed in Bergquist (Footnotenote 15), 371 and Dúner (Footnotenote 5), 38, 56.
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