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July-Dec 2007

In This Issue

In Memoriam—James L. Pendleton, M.D.

Editorial Remarks

This issue begins with a remembrance of our dear friend and colleague Dr. James L. Pendleton. As is customary with the July–December issue, the transactions and reports of the Annual Meeting are included, the one hundred and tenth this year, 2007. The Annual Address was published in the January–June issue...

Transactions of the One Hundred and Tenth Annual Meeting
Publisher/Editor Report

The Annual Meeting of the Swedenborg Scientific Association was held on April 27, 2007, in Cairnwood Village, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. Dinner was served at 6:00 PM, and the meeting was called to order at 7:30. The president, Rev. Dr. Reuben Bell, welcomed members and friends of the association and spoke of its current activities...

Treasurer's Report

Science and Spirituality

Karl Birjukov

Swedenborg says the following in Arcana Coelestia 7021:

When I have blotted you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. All the bright lights in the heavens I will make dark over you, and I will put darkness over your land. (Ezekiel 32: 7, 8)
This order of devastation appears regularly in the Bible, and has come to be associated with all kinds of end-of-times outpourings in recent years. And yet looked at in its deeper sense, it contains an irony that even those who know that it points to the end of a certain phase of spiritual evolution, fail to recognize the modernity of this deeper sense...

Schuchard’s Swedenborg

Brian Talbot

According to Dr. Marsha Keith Schuchard, during Swedenborg’s “long career, he gained fame as a military engineer, natural scientist, intelligence agent, and kabbalistic visionary.” The purpose of the following article is to show that there is little, if any, evidence for Dr. Schuchard’s last two classifications of Swedenborg. I do not feel that she has made a case for his being, in fact, “a secret agent on earth and in heaven.”...

The Stockholm Exegetic and Philanthropic Society and Spiritism

Al Gabay

On 19th June 1787 the “spiritist” faction in the Stockholm Exegetic and Philanthropic Society led by Baron Karl Göran Silfverhjelm, a nephew of the venerable Emanuel Swedenborg, sent a letter broadcast to universities, learned societies, mesmeric conclaves and Illuminist Freemasons throughout Europe.1 The letter championed recent experiments conducted by the Society as providing ready confirmation of the Truths of Swedenborg’s teachings, in the “magnetic” means employed to contact higher “Guardian” entities who, they argued, were instrumental in the confrontation with, and the cure of, diseases.

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NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

SSA/SAMARA CENTER MIND-BRAIN SYMPOSIUM

Swedenborg’s Science brought to bear on the problem of where brain ends and mind begins.

Sponsored jointly by the Swedenborg Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and the Samara Center for Practical Spirituality, Saco, Maine

April 26, 2008
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Swedenborg Library
Bryn Athyn, PA

Presentations will

  • Revisit Swedenborg’s proposition of a universal mathesis, or symbolic model of the mind at work. A recently proposed model called Mentics, describes the mind as a set of interacting algorithms, making the mind more understandable than before. Coupled with Swedenborg’s model of spiritual-natural interaction, Mentics lays the foundation for a New Church Psychology.

  • Look at Swedenborg’s model of the human mind compared with its correlates in brain and central nervous system anatomy and physiology. How do environmental data ascend into the brain to be “decoded” in the mind? What flows in, to descend into the conscious mind? Where do “soul” and body meet? What is “soul,” and how do we know there is such an entity? What are the limits of this system?

  • Examine how elements of the theories of relativity and quantum physics are unified in Swedenborg’s model of the various human cognitive functions.

  • Attempt to combine a collection of symposium ideas into a framework for a psychotherapeutic system based on the New Philosophy.

    We are planning a small symposium in a setting that will allow discussion and presenter feedback. It is another in the SSA series on questions of vital interest to contemporary science from the perspective of Swedenborg’s scientific and theological works.

    Contact Dr. Reuben P. Bell, SSA President and Samara Center Director samaracenterofmaine@gmail.com 207-590-5547 www.samaracenter.org

  • SPECIAL ISSUE

    "The Madness Hypothesis"

    This notable issue of The New Philosophy contains a number of articles from various viewpoints, discussing the question of whether Swedenborg suffered from mental illness.
    Click here for a list of articles.


    Maintained by webmaster@swedenborg-philosophy.org

    The New Philosophy is a publication of the Swedenborg Scientific Association
    Incorporated October 20, 1906

    This association was organized on May 27, 1898, for the preservation, translation, publication, and distribution of the scientific and philosophical works of Emanuel Swedenborg, and for the promotion of the principles taught in them, having in view likewise their relation to the science and philosophy of the present day.

    The views expressed by authors are not necessarily those held by the Editor or the Editorial Board

    Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 06-37082
    ISSN 0028-6443