created 2025-04-09, & modified, =this.modified
John Wilkins was born in 1614 and died in 1672.
He was interested in theology, cryptography, music, the manufacture of transparent beehives, the course of an invisible planet, the possibility of a trip to the moon, the possibility and the principles of a world language.
An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language - the principals of a world language.
At one time or another, we have all suffered through those unappealable debates in which a lady, with copious interjections and anacolutha, swears that the word luna is more (or less) expressive than the word moon. Apart from the sell-evident observation that the monosyllable moon may be more appropriate to represent a very simple object than the disyllabic word luna, nothing can be contributed to such discussions.
All languages of the world, are equally inexpressive.
In the universal language conceived by Wilkins around the middle of the seventeenth century each word defines itself. Descartes had already noted in a letter dated November, 1629, that by using the decimal system of numeration we could learn in a single day to name all quantities to infinity, and to write them in a new language, the language of numbers. He also proposed the formation of a similar, general language that would organize and contain all human thought. Around 1664 John Wilkins began to undertake that task.
Wilkins divides the universe into 40 categories or classes, which were subdivisible into differences, subdivisibles then turn to species.
de means element deb means the first of elements, fire. deba means a portion of the element fire, a flame.
Similar to a language invented by Letellier a means animal ab means mammalian abi means herbivorous abiv means equine.
The words of this language are not stupid arbitrary symbols; every letter is meaningful.
Mauthner observes that children could learn Wilkins’s language without knowing that it was artificial; later, in school, they would discover that it was also a universal key and a secret encyclopedia.‘
The problem
Consider the eighth category that deals with stones. It is divided into the following classifications
- ordinary (flint, gravel, slate)
- intermediate (marble, amber, coral)
- precious (coral, opal)
- transparent (amethyst, sapphire)
- insoluble (coal, clay, arsenic)
Kuhn
Jorge Luis Borges attributes the discovery of a “paradoxical list of animals” to Kuhn. The list has become the subject of much modern commentary after it was cited by Foucault. However, Borges’s attribution is the only known evidence that either such a work existed or that Kuhn discussed it (it is, actually, a fictional attribution; see Otras Inquisiciones (in Spanish)).
Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.
On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, ( i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (I) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, ( n) those that resemble flies from a distance
It is arbitrary. There is no classification of the universe that is not arbitrary and conjectural. The reason is simple, we do not know what the universe is.
“This world,” wrote David Hume, ” … was only the first rude essay of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance; it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity, and is the object of derision to his superiors; it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity, and ever since his death has run on … ”
We must suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense inherent in that ambitious world. If there is, we must conjecture its purpose; we must conjecture the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonymies of God’s secret dictionary.
This impossibility cannot dissuade us at the tasks, though we are aware they are provisional.
The word salmon does not tell us anything about the object it represents; zana the corresponding word.
Thought
This language would constantly be shifting word spelling it seems like it would only be complete when it expanded beyond a superficial usefulness (i.e. a salmon would not be zana but a multi-dimensional array in which some meaning still escapes.)
(Theoretically, a language in which the name of each being would indicate all the details of its destiny, past and future, is not inconceivable. )
Concludes with
Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless than the colours of the autumn forest;.. Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them, in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unisons, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.
María Kodama
Is an Argentine writer and translator. She as also the widow of Borges. They were married shortly before his death, and he bequeathed his entire estate to her.
Kodama died on 26 March 2023 at the age of 86, in Vicente López, Greater Buenos Aires. Kodama left no will and the status of Borges’ work is uncertain.