John Wilkins’ Essay (1668)
Critics and continuators
Vivian Salmon | University of Edinburgh
One of the major achievements of Britsh linguistic scholarship before the 19th century was John Wilkins’ (1609–72) Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668), which attempted to construct, for scientific purposes, a language in which the elements were isomorphic with the categories of reality (as they were perceived by Wilkins). Immediately after its publication, the Essay was presented to the scientists of the newly-founded Royal Society for their critical appraisal. Since the committee appointed to examine it never reported, it has usually been assumed that they were uninterested or disapproving. It can now be shown, however, that it was certainly not lack of enthusiasm among Wilkins’ contemporaries that led to the absence of a report, and that three members of the original committee took part in a project to revise the Essay after its author’s death. It has long been known that a small group were informally engaged on its revision in 1678, according to a report of the antiquarian John Aubrey (1626–97), F.R.S., but hitherto nothing has been known of the enterprise. Recently, their correspondence has been discovered among Aubrey’s collection of manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and these letters, besides showing links with the original committee, illustrate the growth of linguistic insight in the would-be improvers, particularly in respect of semantic classification and various problems in the phonetics of English. The course of their discussion is traced here, and the reasons for their eventual rejection of Wilkins’ scheme. Yet the immense undertaking was never wholly forgotten; it aroused the interest of at least one eminent 18th-century scientist, and became one source of inspiration for Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), creator of the famous Thesaurus.
Published online: 01 January 1974
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.1.2.02sal
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.1.2.02sal
Cited by
Cited by other publications
Lauzon, Matthew J.
Linn, Andrew R & William Poole
Richards, Graham
Subbiondo, Joseph L.
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References
References
Beck, Cave
Burthogge, Richard
Cooper, Christopher
Dalgarno, George
Horne Tooke, John
Michael, Ian
[Paschall, Andrew]
Priestley, Joseph
Ray, John
Roget, Peter Mark
Salmon, Vivian
Stephens, J. E.
Tooke
see Horne Tooke.
Turner, Anthony J.
Andrew Paschall’s Tables of Plants for the Universal Language, 1678”. Bodleian Library Record (to appear).
Ward, Seth