Philosophical Languages in the Seventeenth Century: Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz
Jaap Maat

Abstract:
%Nr: DS-1999-03
%Title: Philosophical Languages in the Seventeenth Century: Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz
%Author: Jaap Maat

The creation of a universal and philosophical language was a widely discussed 
topic in the seventeenth century. One of the goals to be achieved by putting 
such a language into practice was to overcome language barriers. Another goal 
was to have a language that was more efficient and easier to learn than 
existing ones. Furthermore, the envisaged artificial languages were meant to 
incorporate an accurate representation of knowledge, so that learning the 
language would entail acquiring knowledge of the world of nature. Some authors 
even believed that a philosophical language could be instrumental in the growth 
of knowledge in being a tool that greatly improved our thinking. Many efforts 
were made towards the construction of artificial symbol systems of various 
kinds. Among the schemes that were completed, those of two English authors 
stand out for presenting fully-fledged artificial languages. These were 'Ars 
Signorum' (1661) by George Dalgarno (c. 1620-1687), and the 'Essay towards a 
Real Character and a Philosophical Language' (1668) by John Wilkins 
(1614-1672). The present dissertation provides detailed description and 
discussion of both languages. In addition, the work of Gottfried Wilhelm 
Leibniz (1646 - 1716) in this area is examined.
	A brief general introduction (chapter 1) is followed by an outline of 
the intellectual background of the seventeenth-century philosophical language 
schemes (chapter 2), which focuses on influential views concerning the 
relationship between spoken and written language, and on elements of the 
logical and grammatical traditions. Furthermore, some schemes for a universal 
writing system are discussed.
	Dalgarno's philosophical language (chapter 3) developed out of a series 
of earlier schemes. The various stages that Dalgarno's scheme went through are 
described, partly on the basis of a hitherto unpublished autobiographical 
treatise. Shortly after moving from Aberdeen to Oxford in 1657, Dalgarno 
endeavoured to improve a shorthand system. His efforts evolved into drawing up 
a scheme for a universal writing system, which came to the attention of leading 
Oxford scholars, among whom was Wilkins. Dalgarno and Wilkins collaborated on 
developing the scheme further, but it soon turned out that they had 
irreconcilable differences of opinion on how a philosophical language ought to 
be structured. Dalgarno's approach was 'analytic', that is, he wanted to build 
the language on a relatively small foundation of so-called radical words, which 
were to designate basic concepts. Words for all other concepts and kinds of 
things were to be formed by means of compounding radical words. In such a way, 
Dalgarno was convinced, a language could be constructed that was rational, 
efficient, and most suitable for the expression of a logical analysis of 
thought. Wilkins's approach, by contrast, was encyclopedic. In his opinion, the 
most important feature of the lexicon of the philosophical language was that 
the radical words were based on a classification scheme modelled on the 
Aristotelian theory of categories. In reflecting the classification, the 
radical words contained descriptive information on the things designated by 
them. For this reason, Wilkins wanted the lexicon of radical words to be much 
more comprehensive than Dalgarno would allow. The collaboration ended, and both 
Dalgarno and Wilkins pursued their own designs.
Dalgarno's language resulted from a deliberate compromise between the 
encyclopedic, classificatory approach favoured by Wilkins on the one hand, and 
the analytical approach he himself valued most on the other hand. The 
compromise was necessary, Dalgarno believed, because neither method, if applied 
consistently throughout, could lead to a practicable language. Consequently, 
his radical words reflect an all-embracing classification scheme, but their 
number is limited to about 1,000 words. All other words are to be formed by 
means of composition, using the radical words as elements. As for the grammar 
of his language, Dalgarno also resorted to a compromise. A strictly logical 
language, in Dalgarno's view, does not contain word classes of different types, 
but consists entirely of names of the primitive elements out of which our 
thoughts are composed. However, as such a language would be unsuitable for 
communication, he used various inflexions and affixes in his language that 
indicated different parts of speech, and he distinguished a small number of 
pronouns.
Wilkins's philosophical language (chapter 4) has been studied more widely than 
Dalgarno's, partly because it is often erroneously assumed that Wilkins and 
Dalgarno followed the same plan, while Wilkins elaborated it in a more thorough 
and sophisticated manner. Just as Dalgarno, Wilkins drew up a comprehensive 
classification scheme, from which the words of his language were derived. 
However, whereas Dalgarno had deliberately restricted this method in order to 
be able to express as many concepts as possible by means of compounds, Wilkins 
carried it through much further, so that his lexicon of radical words consisted 
of more than 4,000 radical words. Detailed examination of Wilkins's impressive 
tables leads to the conclusion that the relationship between new developments 
in natural science and Wilkins's language was more complicated than is often 
assumed. Rather than claiming his language to be suitable for the expression of 
scientific knowledge, he asserted that his language was modelled on the 
vocabulary of ordinary language users and that scientific discoveries had 
little bearing on this. Furthermore, it is emphasized that Wilkins made it 
quite clear that he was not striving for a perfect language, his goals being 
far less ambitious. 
	By contrast, Leibniz believed throughout his intellectual career that 
is was possible to create a language that would be an important tool for the 
advancement of scientific knowledge (chapter 5). Although he took the 
Aristotelian categories as a starting point just as Dalgarno and Wilkins had 
done, he proposed a thorough revision of this theory, giving more prominence to 
combinatorial principles than to classificatory ones. After a sketch of the 
logical and philosophical tenets and principles connected with Leibniz's plans, 
the work he carried out in order to realize his schemes is described. Leibniz 
studied both Dalgarno's and Wilkins's work very carefully. Although he rightly 
emphasized that the language he envisaged differed fundamentally from the 
languages constructed by his English precursors, he made use of their work in 
executing his own plans. The dissertation shows that various manuscripts by 
Leibniz that have recently been published for the first time contain extensive 
summaries, interspersed with commentary, of parts of Dalgarno's and Wilkins's 
work. It is argued that research on Leibniz's views must take the often unclear 
status of his manuscripts into account. Furthermore, it is shown that Leibniz's 
rational grammar project, which was aimed at explicating the semantics of 
natural language expressions so as to determine their logical structure, 
deserves to be further explored.
	The dissertation concludes with a short chapter in which the languages 
of Dalgarno and Wilkins are compared with one another, and the aims and 
principles underpinning both these languages are compared with those of 
Leibniz's grand but uncompleted project.