John Wilkins’ Essay
John Wilkins’ aim was ‘to provide a means of communication in which every written or spoken symbol was isomorphic with the categories of reality (as perceived by the mind) which were represented directly and without the medium of a natural language’ (Salmon, 1988, p. 99). To this end, Wilkins drew up a vast taxonomy of the natural and man-made world, occupying 266 pages, and to each genus, species, sub-species etc. accorded a letter or letters. Any concept could thus be understood from its formation as a ‘word’. Thus ‘De’ represents the genus ‘element’. The form ‘Deb’ represents the first distinction in Wilkins’ table of elements, namely ‘fire’. Essentially, Wilkins produced a set of ‘semantic primes’, in the sense of Wierzbicka (1996), or ‘unique beginners’ (Miller, 1991), from which all other concepts could be derived. Wilkins also added a set of grammatical rules which when combined with the real character would produce a ‘philosophical language’ that, it was hoped, would lead to great scientific insights.
More interesting for today’s linguist, however, is the ‘real character’ in its true symbolic form. Wilkins used a script which resembled shorthand or Arabic in its formation, in which every line, stroke, curve and diacritic represented some semantic prime drawn from the tables. Thus, merely by looking at a word written in this script one could deduce its meaning from the elements that went into its make-up. That this could actually be done is demonstrated by Robert Hooke’s 1676 transcription of a discourse on pocket watches into the real character (Slaughter, 1982, pp. 174-175) and a letter from Andrew Paschall to John Aubrey in 1677, which consisted of a parallel text in English and Wilkins’ real character (Lewis, 2007, p. 207).
While meeting a number of criteria for good symbols set by Chao (1968), e.g. simplicity and elegance, Wilkins’ real character fails on a number of other criteria. Unlike modern iconic signs, such as those used for road signs, lifts, toilets etc., there is no resemblance between symbol and reality. Secondly, ‘fineness of discrimination between symbols’. Wilkins’ symbols, like many other early attempts at universal characters, fail because the resemblances between many symbols are too close to each other and it becomes impossible to distinguish between them at a glance. The investment in time required to learn such a complex system would far outweigh any advantage gained through it. Its members included Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke and John Wallis. It appears never to have met. In defence of the Essay, Aarsleff (1976) points out that this was also true of committees appointed to sit on other matters. By a supreme irony, however, Salmon (1974) notes that while some members of the group were experts in the field of language (John Wallis – grammarian, William Holder -phonetician and Thomas Henshawe – etymologist), the other members had expertise only in fields outside that of linguistics. Thus, it was that a supposedly universal language probably proved too difficult for all but professionals within the (then unnamed) field of linguistics.
Although the schemes of the seventeenth century ‘language projectors’ were ultimately doomed to failure because of the impossibility of the development of a natural taxonomy to which a real character would relate (Salmon, 1988; Slaughter, 1982; Subbiondo, 1992), the aim of rendering textual meaning comprehensible through the use of symbols has remained a primary consideration through the subsequent history of semiotics.
If you have been mesmerized due to Breitling Brushed Steel Series Replica, please do not hesitate to contact with your Replica Breitling Brushed Steel Series Breitling Chronometer Navitimer Chronograph Stainless Steel online.
Processing your request, Please wait....
