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John Wilkins

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Stephensonia

The idea of a distinguished Reverend wheeling about Epsom in some sort of giant human hamstertrack has an odd sense of whimsy to it.

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Community entry: John Wilkins

John Wilkins (1614-1672), bishop of Chester, was born at Fawsley, Northamptonshire, and educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. He was ordained and became vicar of Fawsley in 1637, but soon resigned and became chaplain successively to Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Berkeley, and Prince Charles Louis, nephew of Charles I. and afterwards elector palatine of the Rhine. In 1648 he became warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Under him the college was extraordinarily prosperous, for, although a supporter of Cromwell, he was in touch with the most cultured royalists, who placed their sons in his charge. In 1659 Richard Cromwell (Tumbledown Dick) appointed him master of Trinity College, Cambridge. At the Restoration in 1660 he was deprived, but appointed prebendary of York and rector of Cranford, Middlesex. In 1661 he was preacher at Gray's Inn, and in 1662 vicar of St Lawrence Jewry, London. He became vicar of Polebrook, Northamptonshire, in 1666, prebendary of Exeter in 1667, and in the following year prebendary of St Paul's and bishop of Chester. Possessing strong scientific tastes, he was the chief founder of the Royal Society and its first secretary. He died in London in November 1672. WilkinsMW.jpg

Reverend John Wilkins

The chief of his numerous works is 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. He is remembered also for a curious work entitled The Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638, 3rd ed., with an appendix "The possibility of a passage thither," 1640). Other works are A Discourse concerning a New Planet (1640); Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641), a work of some ingenuity on the means of rapid correspondence; and Mathematical Magick (1648).

An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language

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. Such a-priori languages were inspired by accounts of how the Chinese writing system worked.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a critique of Wilkins' philosophical language in his essay El idioma analítico de John Wilkins (The Analytical Language of John Wilkins).

More modern a-priori languages are Solresol and Ro.