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Comenius (Komensky) on Lexical Symbolism in an Artificial Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
Although philosophising about given languages had been going on ever since the time of Plato's Kratylos, the idea of an artificial philosophical language or system of signs began to take shape in the seventeenth century. Both Descartes and Mersenne explored the ground for the foundations of a system of expressions which could meet all the requirements of logical thought; but the merit of presenting the first elaborate plans goes to the British authors George Dalgarno and John Wilkins.1 Leibniz followed soon after with his characteristica universalis.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1962
References
page 238 note 1 Dalgarno, G, Ars signorum, 1661. Wilkins, J, An Essay towards a Real Character and Philosophical Language, 1668.Google Scholar
page 240 note 1 This refers to ‘Lexicon reale pansophicum’ which also belongs to the MSS. found in Halle.
page 241 note 1 Gulliver's Travels, Part III, Gh. 5 (A Voyage to Balnibarbi): ‘We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country. The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles; because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns.’
page 242 note 1 0n Human Communication, New York-London 1957, pp. 90–91: ‘We have many word pairs which suggest that we like to make binary comparisons, that this forms part of our thinking habits.… For centuries it has been realised that all communicable information may be communicated entirely in a binary code—only there is no compulsion, and real languages have not developed binary codes.…’
page 242 note 2 Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, Opera I. Ed. J. Van Vloten et J. P. N. Land, Hagae Comitis 1914, p. 28.
page 243 note 1 Defended even by Mill, J. S, Inaugural Address at the University of St Andrews,1867.Google Scholar
page 243 note 2 The Philosophy of Grammar, London 1951, pp. 46–47.Google Scholar
page 243 note 3 Vol. III, p. 636.
page 244 note 1 Couturat, L—Leau, L, Histoire de la langue universelle, Paris 1903.Google Scholar