Talk:An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language

	Constructed languages portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Constructed languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of constructed languages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Constructed languagesWikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languagesTemplate:WikiProject Constructed languagesconstructed language articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Philosophy: Literature / Language / Modern Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Philosophical literature
	Philosophy of language
	Modern philosophy

Linguistics: Philosophy of language Low‑importance

	Linguistics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Philosophy of language task force.

Books

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Books. To participate in the project, please visit its page, where you can join the project and discuss matters related to book articles. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the relevant guideline for the type of work.BooksWikipedia:WikiProject BooksTemplate:WikiProject BooksBook articles

refs[edit]

I added a source for the example words from Wilkins language, is this the correct format for references on wikipedia? Sjf, 17:10, 4 February 2006

The following book goes into great detail about the developments that influenced Wilkins and others: Knowlson, James (1975) Universal Language Schemes in England and France, 1600-1800, University of Toronto Press. This book has almost 70 pages of bibliography and notes.

For a full chapter about Wilkins and his project, see: Eco, Umberto (1995) The Search for the Perfect Language, Oxford: Blackwell.

In _Gulliver's Travels_, the Grand Academy of Lagado was Jonathan Swift's satire of the kinds of projects discussed in Knowlson's book.

Leibniz visited England and was sympathetic to Wilkins' project. He also studied Chinese characters. The hexagrams of the I Ching (or Yi Jing) inspired Leibniz to invent binary arithmetic. See G. W. Leibniz, _Writings on China_, translated by D. J. Cook & H. Rosemont, Chicaco: Open Court.

I don't have time to write this entry, but it's worth a more sympathetic treatment. 173.68.50.234 (talk) 01:33, 16 August 2015 (UTC)John Sowa.[reply]

Chinese[edit]

Which contemporary European accounts of the Chinese writing system inspired Wilkins' "Real Character"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.26.30.209 (talk) 01:52, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, but there was a frequent misconception in the 17th and 18th centuries that Chinese characters wrote ideas directly, not words of a language as such. AnonMoos (talk) 10:58, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]