Abstract
Wilkins attempted to develop an ideal philosophical language based on the real characters of things. His was an important contribution to one response to the problem of the misleading nature of language. The thought was to devise a form of communication that would be universal (to avoid the errors engendered by the babble of numerous tongues) as well as perfectly representative of the natures of things. It was a rejection of the linguistic conventionalism of Aristotle in an attempt to return to the approach of Plato’s Cratylus. Wilkins’ significance lies in the details of his attempt to devise such a language and the extent to which he pursued his efforts. He is representative of a tradition which responded to problems developed by Valla, Montaigne and Francis Bacon (among others) and which was very influential on Leibniz and many within the later German tradition.
Text from: Wilkins, John. 1668. An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language. London: S. Gellibrand.
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Notes
- 1.
Scalinger, Of the Causes of the Latin Tongue, ch. 76.
- 2.
[Wilkins gives the characters for The Lord’s Prayer three times: first, all together; second, juxtaposed with the English; third, individually in his explanations. Note that characters 10, 37, 45, 71, and 74 differ between their first and second versions (in all cases, the third version agrees with the first).]
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Stainton, R.J. (2017). John Wilkins. In: Cameron, M., Hill, B., Stainton, R. (eds) Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_29
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