Abstract
The publication of an impressive volume by John Wilkins appearing in 1668 has been widely regarded as marking the culmination of the seventeenth-century universal language movement, and this is understandable on the basis of its mere outward appearance (figure 4.1 reproduces the title page). The book, entitled An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, was printed under the auspices of the Royal Society. Running to more than 600 folio pages, it clearly surpassed everything that had been published on the subject thus far, with respect to both size and prestige. In university circles, it had been known for several years that the appearance of the book was imminent. Wilkins had finished his work in 1666, and printing was almost done, when a large part of the manuscript and most of the printed sheets were destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It took Wilkins a year and a half1 to recover the loss.
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Notes
The fire occurred in September, 1666; the Essay appeared in April, 1668.
Ecclesiastes; or, A Discourse of the Gift of Preaching, as it falls under the rules of Art (London, 1646); Discourse concerning the Beauty of Providence, in all the rugged Passages of it (London, 1649); Discourse concerning the Gift of Prayer; shewing what it is; wherein it consists; and how far it is attainable by Industry, &c (London, 1651).
The Discovery of a New World; or, A Discourse tending to prove, That (‘is probable) there may be another Habitable World in the Moon (London, 1638); Discourse concerning a new Planet; tending to prove, That (‘tis probable) our Earth is one of the Planets (London, 1640).
Mathematical Magick; or, The Wonders that may be performed by Mechanical Geometry (London, 1648).
Stimson 1931: 543; Andrade 1936: 6; Aarsleff 1976: 364-365.
‘Life of the author’ in The Mathematical and Philosophical Works of the Right Reverend John Wilkins, 1708: iv, repr. in Wilkins 1984; Aarsleff 1976: 366; Shapiro 1969: 214.
Stimson 1931: 554-557; Shapiro 1969: 120, 134ff.
Stimson 1931: 563; Shapiro 1969: 2-4.
Cf. Shapiro 1969: 210-213; Salmon 1972: 31-33.
E.g. DeMott 1958: 2.
Cram (1980: 116) notes that several contemporaries “saw fit to rectify this blatant omission by giving him [Dalgarno] due credit in print elsewhere; cf. JohnWallis (1678: 17), Robert Plot (1677: 283) and Anthony Wood (1691: 506)”. The unnamed author of An Abstract of Dr. Wilkins’s Essay, included in The Mathematical and Philosophical Works of the Right Reverend John Wilkins (1708), devotes almost two of the sixteen pages taken up by the abstract to the only digressive comment contained in it, and this concerns the question why Wilkins failed to mention Dalgarno by name (p. 172-174).
Cf. the longish footnote to 3.3.2 above. The author of An Abstract of Dr. Wilkins’s Essay in Wilkins 1984[1708] speculates that Dalgarno’s scepticism with respect to the possibility of drawing up universally acceptable tables “gave the Bishop some Disgust”, and that this may explain why Wilkins did not mention Dalgarno’s name (p. 173-174).
Eco has taken this suggestion for a historical fact (1995: 228).
Plot 1705 [1677]: 289. It must be noted however that Dalgarno may have been the source of this information, for Plot hints that he has talked about the matter with Dalgarno in person, not long before writing the passage, as he says about Dalgarno: “His judgment then [i.e. when he worked on Ars Signorum] being, and as far as I can perceive, still remaining unshaken, notwithstanding what has been done since [i.e. the publication of the Essay, among other things], that from a few general words allowed to be radical, the names of the inferior species should be made off by composition” 1705[1677]: 288.
Plot 1705[1677]: 289. The author of an Abstract of Dr. Wilkins’s Essay in Wilkins 1984[1708] notes that “by Mr. Dalgarno’s Book, it is evident that he was in his Judgment against those Tables, as being too tedious and difficult, and such as Philosophers were not agreed in, and by consequence other Men of different Languages and Nations, could not have the same Idea’s about them” (Wilkins 1708:173). However, the author curiously concludes on account of what is said on the title page of Ars Signorum that “Mr. Dalgarno’s Design, tho’ he differ’d in the Method, was the same, in the main, with the Bishop’s”.
Couturat & Leau 1903: 19-22. Besides being the author of some important works on Leibniz (Couturat 1901, 1903), Couturat was himself an ardent advocate of Ido, and an outspoken opponent of Esperanto.
E.g. Mauthner 1910: 498-502; Verbürg 1952: 297-301; Cohen 1977: 30-34; Robins 1989[1967]: 127-130; Eco 1995: 238-259.
Cf. Christensen 1946; Jones 1951[1932]; Hüllen 1989.
Dolezal 1985, Dolezal 1986.
Cf. Michael 1970, Padley 1985: 363-378, Salmon 1975, Frank 1992[1979]
Funke 1929: 63-94; Subbiondo 1987.
Linsky 1966; Subbiondo 1977.
Cassirer 1923; Cohen 1954; Stillman 1995.
Strasser 1988.
Rossi 1960; Yates 1966.
DeMott 1955; Clauss 1982; Stillman 1995.
Stimson 1931; Firth 1964[1937]; Mc Colley 1938; Funke 1959; Salmon 1966.
Andrade 1936; Vickery 1953; Borges 1960; Slaughter 1982; Eco 1995; Chiusaroli 1998.
Funke 1959: 214.
Frank 1992[1979]: 274.
Salmon 1972: 33. On the other hand, R.F. Jones (1951[1932]: 154) maintains that “Wilkins’ undertaking represents the lowest state to which language was degraded”.
Cf. e.g. Couturat & Leau 1903: 22, 18; Stimson 1931: 562; Andrade 1936: 11; Knowlson 1975: 101-102; Asbach-Schnitker 1984: xxvii; Robins 1990[1967]: 129.
Cohen 1954: 61-63 provides a lucid account of this point. As has been noted (cf. 3.6), Funke 1929: 14 has raised a similar (and misdirected) objection to Dalgarno.
Thus Mauthner 1910: 500 states that it would be foolish to laugh about Wilkins’s catalogue of the world, since this was “innerhalb seiner Weltanschauung ganz vorzüglich ersonnen”. Subbiondo 1977: 51 claims that “Wilkins never recognized that his system was arbitrary”.
For example, Rossi 1960: 216 ff. discusses both Dalgarno and Wilkins as authors trying to construct a ‘perfect language’ by means of ‘perfect tables’ (p. 221). Cf. 4.2.3 for discussion.
Cf. DeMott 1955. Salmon 1988: 137 [=1966b: 378] convincingly makes this point, among a number of other arguments.
Stimson 1992[1931]: 92; Knowlson 1975: 100.
In a later section, Wilkins does single the first language out from all others, but only to make the obvious point that it did not result from a long historical process and further to point out that just as all other languages “it was not made by human Art upon Experience” (p. 19). Any suggestion that the first language was perfect is absent from this passage as well.
Essay, p. 2: “Tis evident enough that no one Language is natural to mankind”. Cf. Mercury (p. 2): “Languages are so far Natural unto us, as other Arts and Sciences. A Man is bora without any of them, but yet capable of all” (p. 2).
Cf. Mauthner 1910: 500: “Die Zeit des Bischofs Wilkins hatte noch keine Ahnung von moderner Sprachwissenschaft, noch weniger konnte sie wissen, wie zufällig der Bedeutungswandel der Worte vor sich gegangen ist”.
Examples of this procedure can be found in DeMott 1955: 1068, 1957: 5, 1958: 2, Rossi 1960: 227, Slaughter 1982: 162, Claus 1992[1982]: 54.
Slaughter (1982: 86) considers the Essay as the culmination of a movement she thinks can be explained by observing, among other things, that in a literate culture written language comes to be viewed as ideographic. But if my analysis is correct, it is precisely the failure to recognize that written language can be viewed as ideographic which explains a conspicuous feature of Wilkins’s scheme.
For the sake of convenience, I shall in the sequel of this section use the expression ‘words of the language’ as short for’ symbols of the real character and words of the philosophical language’, whenever this can be done without causing confusion.
Cf. e.g Blundeville 1599: 12: “Predicaments are certaine titles or tables conteining all thinges that be in the world”.
The tradition distinguished five predicables, including ‘proprium’ and ‘accidens’ in addition to the three used by Wilkins. These three are treated separately from the two others in Wallis’s logic: Lib.l Cap. iv is on genus, species, difference, Cap í on proprium and accidens (Wallis 1686). The definitions of the predicables were traditionally based upon ontological distinctions.
Boethius, De topicis differentiis (about 520), 1178B5ff. An illuminating discussion of the issues involved is to be found in an essay on the text by the editor, Eleonore Stump, 1978: 248-261.
Porphyry and Boethius state that ‘rational animal’ is a genus of which ‘man’ is one of the species; an additional difference ‘mortal’ is required to distinguish ‘man’ from the other species of rational animal, namely ‘god’. This division was unacceptable to Christian authors, who maintain that ‘man’ is the only species of ‘rational animal’ (e.g. Blundeville 1599: 9). Clearly, this does not affect the general point that subaltern genera may have the status of both genus and species.
Porphyry, Isagoge, P. 2, 27-29; Ñ 5, 21-22. Warren 1975: 32; 38.
On p. 22 he says that the species are enumerated “according to such an order and dependance amongst them, as may contribute to the defining of them”, which is perhaps more ambitious, but still rather unpretentious. On p. 440, however, he claims that “every word [is] a description of the thing signified by it”.
Cram 1994: 225 quotes from a letter by Paschall to Aubrey (10 November 1676), both of whom were engaged in revising Wilkins’s Essay in the 1670s, in which Paschall says that he assumes that in the passage under discussion Wilkins is referring to Ward’s opinion.
Clauss 1992 [1982]: 55 shows a complete misunderstanding of the structure of Wilkins’s scheme in alleging that “Wilkins postulates a rudimentary correlation between linguistic functions and numerical values”.
Disregarding for the moment the items joined by opposition or affinity, to be discussed below (4.3.4).
Again disregarding the fact that often several species are connected with a single place on the tables. If all species of fish enumerated in the tables are counted in, the total number is 160. Cf. 4.3.4 below.
It might well be that this more scientific classification was proposed by John Ray, who intensively collaborated with Wilkins in drawing up the tables of plants, after the Great Fire had destroyed the original tables.
The exact figures are: 1,626 species are joined to one other one, 70 to two, and 8 to three other ones.
in one instance, a difference has a double opposite: ‘worship’ (4th difference under the genus ‘ecclesiastical relation’) is opposed to both’ superstition’ and ‘prophaneness’.
Cf. e.g. Lyons 1977: 271: “Binary opposition is one of the most important principles governing the structure of languages”.
Kay’s article originated from a need to clarify a number of issues arising from anthropological and linguistic research into semantic relations among words and the conceptual structures supposedly corresponding to these relations.
Leibniz added: “I concede what he says that these things can be periphrastically expressed”.
That is, the radical word listed under the 29th genus, 6th difference, 7th species. For the sake of convenience, references to specific places of radical words in the tables will in the following be made by means of abbreviated expressions of this kind.
Other instances occur under ‘military relation’, where the difference ‘military events’ contains the species ‘coming off upon equal terms’,’ stand his ground’, ‘keep the field’, ‘hold out’,’ save one’s own’ (rads. 38.2.1 to 38.2.5).
A radical consisting of more than one English word which is not included on the basis of antonymy is ‘moderateness in recreation’, its opposite being ‘immoderateness in recreation’ (rad. 26.2.5).
McMahon (1996b) shows that Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great among others made an explicit distinction between the three major categories of ‘accident’ and the other six. As McMahon explains, it was argued that the three major categories were necessary in that any mental representation of some substance necessarily involves specific properties falling under each of these categories. By contrast, properties falling under one of the other accidents may be left out without making the mental representation fundamentally defective.
As Wilkins’s dictionary indicates, the term ‘rhetoric’ is to be rendered in the philosophical language by means of a periphrastical expression meaning ‘the art of speaking ornately’. This manner of expression is analogous to the one used for the terms ‘logic’, to be rendered as ‘the art of reason’, and ‘grammar’, to be rendered as ‘the art of speaking properly’.
Shapiro 1969: 124 states that Wilkins was probably responsible for bringing Boyle to Oxford in the 1650s. Boyle and Wilkins were both involved in meetings which eventually resulted in the foundation of the Royal Society.
Aristotle, Meteorologica II, 369b, 5-8. Descartes, Meteores, Oeuvres, Adam et Tannery VI: 319.
Letter to Lister, 7 May 1669. Quoted and translated from the Latin by De-Mott. DeMott provides a lucid account of the clash between linguistic and scientific principles, although he unduly restricts the linguistic considerations to mnemonic ones. Ever since DeMott drew attention to these comments by Ray, they have occasioned historians to depict Wilkins as rigidly applying his preconceived method, being insensitive to critical objections by his scientific collaborators. This picture has been rightly criticized by Clauss 1992[1982]: 56-57. Aarsleff (1992[1976]: 28) quotes the same passage from Ray’s letter, adding: “It is a good question whether Wilkins knew of this criticism, which went to the heart of the matter; the Essay did not, as he had intended, follow the “method of nature”.” This is only a ‘good question’ if one ignores the fact that the text of the Essay contains a clear answer: it abounds with evidence of Wilkins’s being acutely aware that his tables did not and could not accurately follow the ‘method of nature’.
The classic treatment, as well as, one might say, the creation of the subject is to be found in Arthur Lovejoy’s work of that title (Lovejoy 1936).
A fuller account of this passage is Emery 1948 (Subbiondo 1992: 278-284).
Blundeville 1599: 23 includes ‘measure of speech’ in his table of ‘quantitie’. Wallis 1686: 40 offers an explanation of why some authors have included ‘oration’ under quantity: this is because Aristotle says’ somewhere’ (‘alicubi’) that oration is discrete rather than continuous quantity, which Wallis thinks he said because we do not produce a continuous sound in speaking, but proceed by successive sounds. In fact, Aristotle in the Categories (VI, 5a 34-37) mentions speech as an example of something whose parts have no position because of its transience. That this remark, apparently made in passing while treating quantity, has been sufficient reason for a vast number of authors through many centuries to maintain that’ speech’ should be subsumed under quantity shows that the opponents of Aristotelianism had some point in charging its adherents with docility.
Cf. McColley 1992 [1938] for a detailed account of Wilkins’s controversy with Ross on the subject. Among Dalgarno’s unpublished papers, there is a treatise in which he aims to show that the heliocentric hypothesis is very improbable (Chist Church MS 162, ff. 105v-94v).
1602: 133, printed in Shumaker 1982: 115.
It may be noted that the order among the consonants, as far as the first six of them are concerned, is the same as the order observed by Dalgarno.
In general, I use simple ‘y’ without stroke instead of the symbol Y (used in Welsh) for the sake of convenience. It designates a ‘guttural’ vowel as in ‘but’.
Wilkins (p. 415) has ‘gade’ and ‘glade’, which does not match the tables. Eco 1995: 249 noting this point argues that it shows how much Wilkins’s language is vulnerable to misprints and misunderstandings (cf. 3.6 for discussion of this argument). Wilkins farther says that insertion of ‘r’ indicates the ‘third combination’ of nine species, i.e. those species whose numerical code is higher than 18. But such species do not occur in the tables at all. This mismatch between tables and text (left unnoticed by Eco) cannot be accounted for by supposing printer’s errors, and just as the former is probably due to slips in correcting earlier versions of the text.
In the centre of Amsterdam, two parallel streets which are situated close to each other are called ‘Handboogstraat’ and ‘Voetboogstraat’ respectively. I am not the only person who keeps forgetting which one is which, and it seems plausible that things would have been easier had the names been completely different.
In the chapter on syntax, irony is discussed as being primarily a matter of pronunciation. The lack of a special mark for irony is another consequence of the ‘deficiency and imperfection’ of existing languages (p. 356). The philosophical language uses, quite appropriately, an inverted exclamation mark (i) for indicating irony (p. 377).
Interestingly, Wilkins suggests the use of an extra mark meaning ‘manteia’ in designating those ‘cheating arts’ “with which the world always hath been and will be abused”, such as astrology and chiromancy (p. 317).
That the representation of a meaning component as either a particle or a radical word is ultimately irrelevant for the meaning of the compound in which it occurs, is implicitly acknowledged by Wilkins. Discussing the possibility that two transcendental particles are needed to represent the meaning of some word, he suggests that the meaning of one of these particles be expressed by an integral and the other by a particle (p. 351).
Another sense of ‘kingdom’, namely ‘regnation’ is rendered as ‘king + active’; cf. 4.5.7.
A modern edition with translation is Bursill-Hall 1972. The Grammatica Speculativa was one of the few complete Modistic works, and a sophisticated one.
Campanella’s work is quoted by Wilkins under the title Grammatica Philosophica, by which he probably intends to refer to the former’s Philosophiae rationalis partes quinque (1638). Caramuel’s Grammatica Audax, to which Wilkins refers, was published in 1654. Cf. Salmon 1979 [1975]: 102-106, and Padley 1976: 160-184 for discussion.
Greek grammarians, such as Dionysius Thrax, as well as the tradition of Latin grammar as expounded in the canonical works of Donatus and Priscian distinguished eight word classes. However, the Latin grammarians omitted the article and added the interjection (Robins 1990: 61). Wilkins’s scheme contains both, but leaves out the traditional class of participle, which he regards as adjective. To the eight remaining traditional classes (the copula replacing the verb), five are added, since (i) substantive and adjective are separate classes, which traditionally were regarded as a single class, namely the noun; (ii) two types of adverbs are distinguished; (iii) ‘mode’, (iv) tense, and (v) transcendental particles are added.
Michael’s reconstruction of Wilkins’s system of word classes (1970: 247) is inaccurate, among other things, in including the verb and in ignoring ‘mode’ and ‘tense’. This is apparently a consequence of his taking the list of grammatical terms occurring in the tables (p. 46) as a basis rather than the chapter on natural grammar, which is the correct source.
On inspection of the tables it appears that examples of this are rare, except for radical words referring to differences in the tables of plants and animals, which usually and quite naturally are expressed by adjectives. However, it may be that the full meaning of e.g. the radical ‘whole footed’ should be taken to be ‘whole-footed beast’, in which case this would provide an example of a periphrastical expression. It will be recalled that Wilkins was dissatisfied with the way the differences in his tables had to be expressed (cf. 4.3.2).
Padley 1976: 201 notes that Campanella assumes “that every verb is derived from an essence, even if that essence is not represented in the language by any noun”.
At the risk of being justifiedly charged with philosophical hair-splitting, one could argue that actions may do things. Even if this is granted, it is very unlikely that Wilkins, who wanted his language to contain only necessary rules, would have felt the need for a morphological derivation to designate actions of actions, or that any natural language would ever contain it. In any case, it is apparent that a rule prescribing the form that radicals denoting actions should take is needed.
Explaining a sample fragment of his real character, Wilkins explicitly states that since ‘parent’ is a noun of person, it does not need the transcendental particle of person to be affixed to it (p. 396). He does not follow the same reasoning with respect to nouns of action and the mark for ‘active’. As has been said, the latter mark is always added to adjectives translating a verb.
Cf. The Grammatica Speculativa of Thomas of Erfurt which characterizes substantives as nouns signifying ‘per modum per se stantis’ and adjectives as nouns signifying ‘per modum adiacentis’ (Bursill-Hall 1972: 158).
There may be exceptions to this which do bear out Wilkins’s point: e.g. the unwell-formedness of ‘littlely’.
Bursill-Hall 1972: 69 states that the term was introduced by Abelard (12th century); cf. Pinborg 1972: 54.
Robins 1990: 39; Bursill-Hall 1972: 71.
Cf. Funke 1929: 74-83 for an admirable survey of the various phonetic values that Wilkins probably intended to represent by his examples.
Coudert 1978: 57-61; 105. Isermann 1996: 55-60.
To Salmon’s quite convincing arguments it could be added that one of De-Mott’s main premisses is unsound: he erroneously assumes that a sudden fundamental change of objectives took place in the 1640s. In fact, as has been argued, no such change occurred. Cf. also Funke 1959. For discussion of connections between Comenius and Dalgarno, cf. Cram 1989, who argues that the English language planners rather exerted some influence on Comenius. Cf. also Cram & Maat 1996.
Knowlson’s account is further based on contemporary reports of alleged sympathies for Lullism on Ward’s part. This does however not warrant the conclusion that he was influenced by occultism. Further, although an examination of Ward’s ideas in the Vindiciae is certainly relevant for Wilkins, who was closely associated with Ward, and who wrote a preface to the Vindiciae, it is clear that if it could be established that Ward was significantly influenced by mysticism (which is unlikely), this would not imply that Wilkins also was.
E.g. Aarsleff 1992[1976]: 26. Coudert 1978: 104 stresses Ward’s opposition to mysticism as well as the difference between his views and those of the mystics, but maintains that ‘the concept of a real character’ emerged from ‘mystical and magical ideas’. Cf. Cram and Maat 2002 for further discussion.
At the risk of gross over-simplification, I treat in the present context such divers trends as Cabbalism, ‘language of nature’ mysticism, Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism as though these could all be associated with a single consistent view on language. By the ‘language planners’ I mean the English ones.
Isermann erroneously assumes that’ signs’ must be either natural or conventional: “We cannot have it both ways” (1996: 69). Wilkins rightly perceived that we certainly can. Cf. also 3.4.6 and 5.4.2.
E.g. Shapiro 1969: 221-223; Firth 1964[1937]: 65.
E.g. Andrade 1992[1936]: 258; Aarsleff 1992[1976]: 27.
Swift 1983[1726]: 230-231 (Gulliver’s Travels, III.5).
The classic treatment of this subject is Salmon 1988[1974]: 191-206. Further, Knowlson 1975: 102-107, Slaughter 1982: 174-184, and Cram 1994 offer useful discussion. Lewis 2001 provides the most thorough and comprehensive account.
See Andrade 1992[1936] for discussion and a translation.
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Maat, J. (2004). Wilkins: The Art of Things. In: Philosophical Languages in the Seventeenth Century: Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 54. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1036-8_4
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