I conversed today with the spirits and angels around me on a variety of topics, and afterwards about the sciences, or the wisdom of this age. It is incapable of serving as a basis for spiritual truths, much less for heavenly truths, but is like the last heaven, which distorts the truths coming down to it from heaven into the opposite. For today, whatever is taught by the sciences about the natural causes of observable things, like those in the human body, such as the senses, or whatever they contribute to a knowledge of the soul and related matters, is full of false hypotheses, in which not even one truth comes to view - in fact, the way is even closed by them to the point where it is not allowable to reach out the thoughts beyond grossest Nature. Therefore spiritual and heavenly things are considered to be nothing. Since this is the kind of basis into which spiritual truths are coming down, they are necessarily stopped and prevented from entering, for there is no natural truth there to receive, connect with, and confirm them, but it either completely repels them, or distorts them into the opposite. Hence one may conclude of what use scientific truths, or truths unearthed through the sciences, could be. 1747, 14 November (old calendar).