An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language
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| The resulting Character, and its vocalization, for a given concept thus captures, to some extent, the concept's [[semantics]]. | The resulting Character, and its vocalization, for a given concept thus captures, to some extent, the concept's [[semantics]]. | ||
| - | The ''Essay'' also proposed ideas on weights and measure similar to those later found in the [[metric system]].<ref>[http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/WilkinsTranslationLong.pdf Reproduction and transcription of a short section of the original document]</ref><ref>[http://blog.plover.com/physics/meter.html John Wilkins invents the meter ]</ref> | + | The ''Essay'' also proposed ideas on weights and measure similar to those later found in the [[metric system]]. |
| The botanical section of the essay was contributed by [[John Ray]]; | The botanical section of the essay was contributed by [[John Ray]]; | ||
| - | [[Robert Morison]]'s criticism of Ray's work began a prolonged dispute between the two men.<ref name="Vines 1913">{{cite book | author = [[Sydney Howard Vines|Vines, Sydney Howard]] | year = 1913 | chapter = Robert Morison 1620—1683 and John Ray 1627—1705 | editor = [[Francis Wall Oliver|Oliver, Francis Wall]] (ed.) | title = Makers of British Botany | publisher = Cambridge University Press | page = 21}}</ref> | + | [[Robert Morison]]'s criticism of Ray's work began a prolonged dispute between the two men. |
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| ==Related efforts, discussions, and literary references== | ==Related efforts, discussions, and literary references== | ||
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| The ''Essay'' has received a certain amount of academic and literary attention,{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}} usually casting it as brilliant but hopeless. | The ''Essay'' has received a certain amount of academic and literary attention,{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}} usually casting it as brilliant but hopeless. | ||
| - | One criticism (among many) is that "words expressing closely related ideas have almost the same form, differing perhaps by their last letter only...[I]t would be exceedingly difficult to remember all these minute distinctions, and confusion would arise, in rapid reading and particularly in conversation."<ref> | + | One criticism (among many) is that "words expressing closely related ideas have almost the same form, differing perhaps by their last letter only...[I]t would be exceedingly difficult to remember all these minute distinctions, and confusion would arise, in rapid reading and particularly in conversation." |
| - | Albert Léon Guérard, ''A Short History of the International Language Movement,'' 1921, pp.90-92 <!-- Actually it's just one of these 3 pages, but I can't tell which page exactly from where I sit just now --> </ref> | + | ([[Umberto Eco]] notes that Wilkins himself made such a mistake in the ''Essay,'' using ''Gαde'' (barley) where apparently ''Gαpe'' (tulip) was meant.) |
| - | ([[Umberto Eco]] notes<ref>''The Search for the Perfect Language''</ref> that Wilkins himself made such a mistake in the ''Essay,'' using ''Gαde'' (barley) where apparently ''Gαpe'' (tulip) was meant.) | + | |
| - | [[George Edmonds (lawyer)|George Edmonds]] sought to improve Wilkins' Philosophical Language by reorganizing its grammar and orthography while keeping its taxonomy.<ref> | + | [[George Edmonds (lawyer)|George Edmonds]] sought to improve Wilkins' Philosophical Language by reorganizing its grammar and orthography while keeping its taxonomy. More recent ''a priori'' languages (among many others) are [[Solresol]] and [[Ro (language)|Ro]]. <!-- why are these being called out in particular? There are 100s of such proposals! --> |
| - | ''A Universal Alphabet, Grammar, and Language, Comprising a Scientific Classification of the Radical Elements of Discourse: and Illustrative Translations from the Holy Scriptures and the Principal British Classics: to which is Added, A Dictionary of the Language,'' 1855. </ref> | + | |
| - | More recent ''a priori'' languages (among many others) are [[Solresol]] and [[Ro (language)|Ro]]. <!-- why are these being called out in particular? There are 100s of such proposals! --> | + | |
| [[Jorge Luis Borges]] discusses Wilkins' philosophical language in his essay ''[[El idioma analítico de John Wilkins]]'' (''The Analytical Language of John Wilkins''), comparing Wilkins’ classification to the fictitious Chinese encyclopedia ''[[Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge's Taxonomy|Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge]]'' and expressing doubts about any attempt at a universal classification. | [[Jorge Luis Borges]] discusses Wilkins' philosophical language in his essay ''[[El idioma analítico de John Wilkins]]'' (''The Analytical Language of John Wilkins''), comparing Wilkins’ classification to the fictitious Chinese encyclopedia ''[[Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge's Taxonomy|Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge]]'' and expressing doubts about any attempt at a universal classification. | ||
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An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (London, 1668) is the best-remembered of the numerous works of John Wilkins, in which he expounds a new universal language, meant primarily to facilitate international communication among scholars, but envisioned for use by diplomats, travelers, and merchants as well. Unlike many universal language schemes, it was meant merely as an auxiliary to — not a replacement of — existing "natural" languages.
Wilkins' scheme
Wilkin's "Real Character" is an ingeniously constructed family of symbols corresponding to an elaborate classification scheme developed at great labor by Wilkins and his colleagues, which was intended to provide elementary building blocks from which could be constructed the universe's every possible thing and notion. The Real Character is emphatically not an orthography in that it is not a written representation of oral speech. Instead, each symbol represents a concept directly, without (at least in the early parts of the Essay's presentation) there being any way of vocalizing it at all; each reader might, if he wished, give voice to the text in his or her own tongue. Inspiration for this approach came in part from (partially mistaken) accounts of the Chinese writing system.
Later in the Essay Wilkins introduces his "Philospophical Language," which assigns phonetic values to the Real Characters, should it be desired to read text aloud without using any of the existing national languages. (The term philosophical language is an ill-defined one, used by various authors over time to mean a variety of things; most of the description found at the article on "philosophical languages" applies to Wilkins' Real Character on its own, even excluding what Wilkins called his "Philosophical Language")
For convenience, the following discussion blurs the distinction between Wilkins' Character and his Language. Concepts are divided into forty main Genera, each of which gives the first, two-letter syllable of the word; a Genus is divided into Differences, each of which adds another letter; and Differences are divided into Species, which add a fourth letter. For instance, Zi identifies the Genus of “beasts” (mammals); Zit gives the Difference of “rapacious beasts of the dog kind”; Zitα gives the Species of dogs. (Sometimes the first letter indicates a supercategory— e.g. Z always indicates an animal— but this does not always hold.) The resulting Character, and its vocalization, for a given concept thus captures, to some extent, the concept's semantics.
The Essay also proposed ideas on weights and measure similar to those later found in the metric system. The botanical section of the essay was contributed by John Ray; Robert Morison's criticism of Ray's work began a prolonged dispute between the two men.
Related efforts, discussions, and literary references
The Essay has received a certain amount of academic and literary attention,Template:Citation needed usually casting it as brilliant but hopeless.
One criticism (among many) is that "words expressing closely related ideas have almost the same form, differing perhaps by their last letter only...[I]t would be exceedingly difficult to remember all these minute distinctions, and confusion would arise, in rapid reading and particularly in conversation." (Umberto Eco notes that Wilkins himself made such a mistake in the Essay, using Gαde (barley) where apparently Gαpe (tulip) was meant.)
George Edmonds sought to improve Wilkins' Philosophical Language by reorganizing its grammar and orthography while keeping its taxonomy. More recent a priori languages (among many others) are Solresol and Ro.
Jorge Luis Borges discusses Wilkins' philosophical language in his essay El idioma analítico de John Wilkins (The Analytical Language of John Wilkins), comparing Wilkins’ classification to the fictitious Chinese encyclopedia Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge and expressing doubts about any attempt at a universal classification.
In Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, character Daniel Waterhouse spends considerable time supporting the development of Wilkins' classification system.
