Analytical Language
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Stephensonia
Categories among his 'Logic Mill' cards suggest Daniel Waterhouse never forgot his early discussions with John Wilkins; EG Noah's Ark.**
Authored entries
- John Wilkins (Neal Stephenson)
- John Wilkins (George Dyson)
- Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:Godfrey William Waterhouse
- Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:22:John Wilkins...Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
- Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:36:According to what scheme? (Alan Sinder)
- Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:36:No linear indexing system (Edward Vielmetti)
- Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:112:at Epsom (Neal Stephenson)
- Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:124:Punishments (Neal Stephenson)
- Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:641:Wilkins cypher (Neal Stephenson)
- Talk:A very brief introduction to the Royal Society (Talith)
Analytical Language
From Wikipedia
The chief of the numerous works of John Wilkins was An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (London, 1668), in which he expounds a new universal language for the use of philosophers.
In the essay, Wilkins defines his "real character", which is a new orthography for the English language that resembles shorthand, and his "philosophical language" which is based an early classification scheme or ontology (in what would later become the computer science meaning of the term).
Wilkins describes a large number of possible concepts as single words by first dividing all reality into forty different categories, each assigned to a different syllable, then sub-dividing these categories into sub-categories, and so on.
The resulting words thus encode some of the semantics of their meanings into their spelling.
Related entries
- Elias Ashmole
- John Wilkins
- Laputa
- Noah's Ark
- Daniel Waterhouse
- Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge
- Wilkins cipher
- Cryptonomicon
- Quicksilver