A 1758 treatise by Emanuel Swedenborg, Earths in our solar system, argued for life on other planets by claiming communication with extraterrestrial spirits in the afterlife. The paper shows that Swedenborg combined two popular literary genres—writings on the plurality of worlds and dialogues of the dead—for the first time. This revised understanding presents Swedenborg as a versatile but ill-fated recombiner of literary genres. The work also sheds light on eighteenth-century literary interactions and the reception of themes like plurality of worlds, mysticism, and satire in Scandinavia and Germany.
In Imperial Russia, Alexander N. Aksakov (1832-1903) worked to establish a scientific approach to 'mediumistic phenomena' between 1865 and 1875. He built an international network of like-minded individuals and translated and published works in multiple languages to foster discussions about the intersections of science and spiritualism. In 1874 he founded Psychische Studien, the first journal dedicated to scientific investigations of spiritualist phenomena. Aksakov's efforts both 'domesticated' spiritualism in Russia and 'internationalized' Russian contributions to its development. The particular social and cultural landscape of post-Crimean Russia both helped and hindered his attempts to educate the public and scientists about 'scientific spiritualism'.
The article examines how the German naturalist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794-1868) conceptualized native peoples of the Americas through three interlinked notions: the 'American race', 'ruins', and 'savage knowledge'. Martius, a leading figure in nineteenth-century botany and ethnology, characterized American natives by integrating fields such as medicine, botany, theology, philology, and mythology. The concept of 'ruins' served as a guiding metaphor for understanding these peoples, while 'savage knowledge'—semantically aligned with ruins—found its principal expression in shamanic practice. The author argues that Martius's work, though somewhat neglected, was influential among European and American scholars.