Characteristica universalis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

term characteristica universalis, commonly interpreted as universal characteristic, or universal character in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....

able to express mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical concepts. Leibniz thus hoped to create a language usable within the framework of a universal logical calculation or calculus ratiocinator
Calculus ratiocinator
The Calculus Ratiocinator is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned characteristica universalis, a universal conceptual language....

.

The characteristica universalis is a recurring concept in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....

. When writing in French, he sometimes employed the phrase spécieuse générale to the same effect. The concept is sometimes paired with his notion of a calculus ratiocinator and with his plans for an encyclopaedia as a compendium of all human knowledge.

International communication

Many Leibniz scholars writing in English seem to agree that he intended his characteristica universalis or "universal character" to be a form of pasigraphy

Pasigraphy

A pasigraphy is a writing system where each written symbol represents a concept rather than a word or sound or series of sounds in a spoken language. The aim is to be intelligible to persons of all languages...

, or ideographic language. This was to be based on a rationalised version of the 'principles' of Chinese character

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

s, as Europeans understood these characters in the seventeenth century. From this perspective it is common to find the characteristica universalis associated with contemporary universal language

Universal language

Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's population. In some circles, it is a language said to be understood by all living things, beings, and objects alike. It may be the ideal of an international auxiliary language...

projects like Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

, auxiliary languages like Interlingua

Interlingua

Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...

, and formal logic projects like Frege's Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book...

. The global expansion of European commerce in Leibniz's time provided mercantilist motivations for a universal language of trade so that traders could communicate with any natural language.

Others, such as Jaenecke, for example, have observed that Leibniz also had other intentions for the characteristica universalis, and these aspects appear to be a source of the aforementioned vagueness and inconsistency in modern interpretations. According to Jaenecke,
As Couturat wrote, Leibniz criticized the linguistic systems of George Dalgarno

George Dalgarno

George Dalgarno was a Scottish intellectual interested in linguistic problems. Originally from Aberdeen, he later worked as a schoolteacher in Oxford in collaboration with John Wilkins, although the two parted company intellectually in 1659.-Works:...

and John Wilkins

John Wilkins

John Wilkins FRS was an English clergyman, natural philosopher and author, as well as a founder of the Invisible College and one of the founders of the Royal Society, and Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death....

for this reason since they focused on

A universal language of science

Leibniz said that his goal was an alphabet of human thought

Alphabet of human thought

The alphabet of human thought is a concept originally proposed by Gottfried Leibniz that provides a universal way to represent and analyze ideas and relationships, no matter how complicated, by breaking down their component pieces...

, a universal symbolic language (characteristic) for science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

and metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

. According to Couturat, "In May 1676, he once again identified the universal language with the characteristic and dreamed of a language that would also be a calculus—a sort of algebra of thought." (1901, chp 3.). This characteristic was a universalisation of the various "real characteristics". Couturat wrote that Leibniz gave Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphics and chemical signs as examples of real characteristics writing:
In a footnote Couturat added:

Metaphysics

Hartley Rogers emphasised the metaphysical aspect of the characteristica universalis by relating it to the "elementary theory of the ordering of the reals," defining it as "a precisely definable system for making statements of science" (Rogers 1963: 934). Universal language projects like Esperanto, and formal logic projects like Frege's Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book...

are not commonly concerned with the epistemic synthesis of empirical science, mathematics, pictographs and metaphysics in the way Leibniz described. Hence scholars have had difficulty in showing how projects such as the Begriffsschrift and Esperanto embody the full vision Leibniz had for his characteristica.

The writings of Alexander Gode

Alexander Gode

Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von Aesch or simply Alexander Gode was a German-American linguist, translator and the driving force behind the creation of the auxiliary language Interlingua.-Biography:Born to a German father and a Swiss mother, Gode studied at the University of Vienna and the...

suggested that Leibniz' characteristica had a metaphysical bias which prevented it from reflecting reality faithfully. Gode emphasized that Leibniz established certain goals or functions first, and then developed the characteristica to fulfill those functions.

Science

In the domain of science, Leibniz aimed for his characteristica to form diagrams or pictures, depicting any system at any scale, and understood by all regardless of native language. Leibniz wrote:
P. P. Weiner raised an example of a large scale application of Leibniz's characteristica to climatic science. A weather-forecaster invented by Athanasius Kirchner, "interested Leibniz in connection with his own attempts to invent a universal language" (1940).

Leibniz talked about his dream of a universal scientific language at the very dawn of his career, as follows:
Rescher

Nicholas Rescher

Nicholas Rescher is an American philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh. In a productive research career extending over six decades, Rescher has established himself as a systematic philosopher of the old style and author of a system of pragmatic idealism which weaves together threads of...

, reviewing Cohen's 1954 article, wrote that:
Near the end of his life, Leibniz wrote that combining metaphysics with mathematics and science through a universal character would require creating what he called:
The universal "representation" of knowledge would therefore combine lines and points with "a kind of pictures" (pictographs or logogram

Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...

s) to be manipulated by means of his calculus ratiocinator

Calculus ratiocinator

The Calculus Ratiocinator is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned characteristica universalis, a universal conceptual language....

. He hoped his pictorial algebra would advance the scientific treatment of qualitative phenomena, thereby constituting "that science in which are treated the forms or formulas of things in general, that is, quality in general" .

His diagrammatic reasoning

Since the characteristica universalis is diagrammatic and employs pictograms (below left), the diagrams in Leibniz's work warrant close study. On at least two occasions, Leibniz illustrated his philosophical reasoning with diagrams. One diagram, the frontispiece to his 1666 De Arte Combinatoria
De Arte Combinatoria
The Dissertatio de arte combinatoria is an early work by Gottfried Leibniz published in 1666 in Leipzig. It is an extended version of his doctoral dissertation, written before the author had seriously undertaken the study of mathematics. The booklet was reissued without Leibniz' consent in 1690,...

(On the Art of Combinations), represents the Aristotelian theory of how all material things are formed from combinations of the elements earth, water, air, and fire.

These four elements make up the four corners of a diamond (see picture to right). Opposing pairs of these are joined by a bar labeled "contraries" (earth-air, fire-water). At the four corners of the superimposed square are the four qualities defining the elements. Each adjacent pair of these is joined by a bar labeled "possible combination"; the diagonals joining them are labeled "impossible combination". Starting from the top, fire is formed from the combination of dryness and heat; air from wetness and heat; water from coldness and wetness; earth from coldness and dryness. This diagram is reproduced in several texts including Saemtliche Schriften und Briefe.

Leibniz loses will

Leibniz rightly saw that creating the characteristica would be difficult, fixing the time required for devising it as follows: "I think that some selected men could finish the matter in five years", later remarking: "And so I repeat, what I have often said, that a man who is neither a prophet nor a prince can ever undertake any thing of greater good to mankind of more fitting for divine glory". But later in life, a more sober note emerged. In a March 1706 letter to the Electress Sophia of Hanover

Sophia of Hanover

Sophia of the Palatinate was an heiress to the crowns of England and Ireland and later the crown of Great Britain. She was declared heiress presumptive by the Act of Settlement 1701...

, the spouse of his patron, he wrote:
In another 1714 letter to Nicholas Remond, he wrote:

Three criteria

C. J. Cohen (1954) set out three criteria which any project for a philosophical language would need to meet before it could be considered a version of the characteristica universalis. In setting out these criteria, Cohen made reference to the concept of "logistic". This concept is not the same as that used in statistical analysis. In 1918, Clarence Irving Lewis

Clarence Irving Lewis

Clarence Irving Lewis , usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher and the founder of conceptual pragmatism. First a noted logician, he later branched into epistemology, and during the last 20 years of his life, he wrote much on ethics.-Early years:Lewis was born in...

, the first English-speaking logician to translate and discuss some of Leibniz's logical writings, elaborated on "logistic" as follows:

Following from this Cohen stipulated that the universal character would have to serve as a:

"International auxiliary language
International auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...

" enabling persons speaking different languages to communicate with one another;
Symbolism for the exact and systematic expression of all present knowledge, making possible a "logistic" treatment of science in general. This symbolism could also be expanded to accommodate future knowledge;
Instrument of discovery and demonstration.

These criteria together with the notion of logistic reveal that Cohen and Lewis both associated the characteristica with the methods and objectives of General systems theory.

A common scientific language

Inconsistency, vagueness

Vagueness

The term vagueness denotes a property of concepts . A concept is vague:* if the concept's extension is unclear;* if there are objects which one cannot say with certainty whether belong to a group of objects which are identified with this concept or which exhibit characteristics that have this...

, and a lack of specifics in both English language translations and modern English language interpretations of Leibniz's writings render a clear exposition difficult. As with Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator
Calculus ratiocinator
The Calculus Ratiocinator is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned characteristica universalis, a universal conceptual language....

two different schools of philosophical thought have come to emphasise two different aspects that can be found in Leibniz's writing. The first point of view emphasizes logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

and language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

, and is associated with analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...

and rationalism

Rationalism

In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...

. The second point of view is more in tune with Couturat's views as expressed above, which emphasize science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

and engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

. This point of view is associated with synthetic philosophy and empiricism

Empiricism

Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...

. Either or both of these aspects Leibniz hoped would guide human reasoning like Ariadne's thread

Ariadne's thread (logic)

Ariadne's thread, named for the legend of Ariadne, is the term used to describe the solving of a problem with multiple apparent means of proceeding - such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma - through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes...

and thereby suggest solutions to many of humanity's urgent problems.

Gödel alleges conspiracy

Because Leibniz never described the characteristica universalis in operational detail, many philosophers have deemed it an absurd fantasy. In this vein, Parkinson wrote:

The logician Kurt Gödel

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...

, on the other hand, believed that the characteristica universalis was feasible, and that its development would revolutionize mathematical practice. He noticed, however, that a detailed treatment of the characteristica was conspicuously absent from Leibniz's publications. It appears that Gödel assembled all of Leibniz's texts mentioning the characteristica, and convinced himself that some sort of systematic and conspiratorial censoring had taken place, a belief that became obsessional. Gödel may have failed to appreciate the magnitude of the task facing the editors of Leibniz's manuscripts, given that Leibniz left about 15000 letters and 40000 pages of other manuscripts. Even now, most of this huge Nachlass

Nachlass

Nachlass is a German word, used in academia to describe the collection of manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and so on left behind when a scholar dies. The word is a compound in German: nach means 'after', and the verb lassen means 'leave'. The plural can be either Nachlasse or Nachlässe...

remains unpublished.

Related 17th century projects

Others in the 17th century, such as George Dalgarno

George Dalgarno

, attempted similar philosophical and linguistic projects, some under the heading of mathesis universalis

Mathesis universalis

Mathesis universalis is a hypothetical universal science modeled on mathematics envisaged by Leibniz and Descartes, among a number of more minor 16th and 17th century philosophers and mathematicians. John Wallis invokes the name as the title to a textbook on Cartesian geometry...

. A notable example was John Wilkins

John Wilkins

, the author of An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language
An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language
An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language is the best-remembered of the numerous works of John Wilkins, in which he expounds a new universal language, meant primarily to facilitate international communication among scholars, but envisioned for use by diplomats, travelers, and...

, who wrote a thesaurus

Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning , in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations...

as a first step towards a universal language. He intended to add to his thesaurus an alphabet of human thought

Alphabet of human thought

(an organisational scheme, similar to a thesaurus

Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning , in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations...

or the Dewey decimal system), and an "algebra of thought," allowing rule-based manipulation. The philosophers and linguists who undertook such projects often belonged to pansophical (universal knowledge) and scientific knowledge groups in London and Oxford, collectively known as the "Invisible College

Invisible College

The Invisible College has been described as a precursor group to the Royal Society of London, consisting of a number of natural philosophers around Robert Boyle...

" and now seen as forerunners of the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

More recent projects

A wide variety of constructed languages have emerged over the past 150 years which appear to support many of Leibniz's intuitions. If indeed they do support Leibniz's vision of unified science, then the remaining question is whether Ariadne's unifying thread can be discerned among these various projects, leading to their integration.

Raymond F. Piper (1957; 432–433) claimed that O.L. Reiser's Unified Symbolism for World Understanding in Science (1955), an expansion of his A Philosophy for World Unification (1946), was inspired by Leibniz's Characteristica Universalis, and believed necessary for world understanding and unbiased communications so that "war may eventually be eliminated and that a worldwide organism of peaceful human beings may gradually be established" (Piper Ibid.).

The study of Boolean algebras and group theory
Group theory
In mathematics and abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups.The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and...

in the 19th century proved correct Leibniz's intuition that algebraic methods
Abstract algebra
Abstract algebra is the subject area of mathematics that studies algebraic structures, such as groups, rings, fields, modules, vector spaces, and algebras...

could be used to reason about qualitative and non-numerical phenomena. Specifically, the members of the universal set
Universal set
In set theory, a universal set is a set which contains all objects, including itself. In set theory as usually formulated, the conception of a set of all sets leads to a paradox...

of a Boolean algebra or group
Group (mathematics)
In mathematics, a group is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with an operation that combines any two of its elements to form a third element. To qualify as a group, the set and the operation must satisfy a few conditions called group axioms, namely closure, associativity, identity...

need not be numbers. Moreover, a fair bit of philosophy and theoretical science can be formalized as axiomatic theories embodying first-order logic
First-order logic
First-order logic is a formal logical system used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. It goes by many names, including: first-order predicate calculus, the lower predicate calculus, quantification theory, and predicate logic...

and set theory
Set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics...

. Note also how model theory
Model theory
In mathematics, model theory is the study of mathematical structures using tools from mathematical logic....

has been employed to formalize and reason about such emphatically nonnumerical subjects as semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

and pragmatics
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...

of natural languages. But these approaches have yet to result in any pictographic
Pictogram
A pictograph, also called pictogram or pictogramme is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to considerable extent pictorial in appearance.Pictography is a...

notations.

Fearnley-Sander (1986) went one step further, defining Leibniz's characteristica as a combination of the algebra of logic (which Fearnley-Sander defined as the calculus ratiocinator) and the algebra of geometry (defined as the characteristica geometrica). Fearnley-Sander suggested that this combination had "come to pass" with the rise of universal algebra
Universal algebra
Universal algebra is the field of mathematics that studies algebraic structures themselves, not examples of algebraic structures....

. Some people other than Fearnley-Sander working in the area of "universal algebra," the study of the mathematical and logical properties of algebraic structures generally, do not believe that universal algebra has anything to do with the characteristica.

Palko, Gy Bulcsu (1986) considered structured analysis for analyzing and designing hierarchic systems by using an iconic language, and suggested that such was an application of the universal characteristics Leibniz's project to the language of structured analysis and the formalization of an iconic control system.

Kluge (1980) argued that Frege's landmark Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book...

was consciously inspired by the characteristica universalis.

Even though Charles Sanders Peirce, a founder of semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...

, believed that all reasoning was diagrammatic, the relation, if any, of the characteristica to his existential graph
Existential graph
An existential graph is a type of diagrammatic or visual notation for logical expressions, proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce, who wrote on graphical logic as early as 1882, and continued to develop the method until his death in 1914.-The graphs:...

s and to semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...

has yet to be explored in the English literature.

Several aspects of logical positivism
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...

, specifically:
- The first-order theories of Rudolf Carnap
  Rudolf Carnap
  Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
  
  's Aufbau (1928, English translation 1967) and of its successor, Goodman (1977), are Leibnizian in their sweep and ambition, although Leibniz would have taken strenuous exception to Carnap's resolute hostility
  Vienna Circle
  The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
  
  to all metaphysics
  Metaphysics
  Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
  
  .
- The unification of science
  Unified Science
  "Unified Science" can refer to any of three related strands in contemporary thought.* Belief in the unity of science was a central tenet of logical positivism. Different logical positivists construed this doctrine in several different ways, e.g...
  
  movement of the 1930s, led by Otto Neurath
  Otto Neurath
  Otto Neurath was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist...
  
  , Rudolf Carnap
  Rudolf Carnap
  Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
  
  , and Charles W. Morris
  Charles W. Morris
  Charles W. Morris was an American semiotician and philosopher.-Background:A son of Charles William and Laura Morris, Charles William Morris was born on May 23, 1901...
  
  , and later by Edward Haskell
  Edward Haskell
  Edward Fröhlich Haskell was a synergic scientist and integral thinker who dedicated his life to the unification of human knowledge into a single discipline.-Biography:Haskell was born in Phillipopolis, now Plovdiv, Bulgaria...
  
  et al., bears comparison with the characteristica.
- Otto Neurath
  Otto Neurath
  Otto Neurath was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist...
  
  's isotype
  Isotype (pictograms)
  Isotype is a method of showing social, technological, biological and historical connections in pictorial form...
  
  pictogram
  Pictogram
  A pictograph, also called pictogram or pictogramme is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to considerable extent pictorial in appearance.Pictography is a...
  
  system, and "international picture language." http://www.fulltable.com/iso/is03.htm

The following attempts to recast parts of theoretical science as axiomatic first-order theories can be viewed as attempts to develop parts of the characteristica:
- Special relativity, by Hans Reichenbach
  Hans Reichenbach
  Hans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical empiricism...
  
  , Rudolf Carnap
  Rudolf Carnap
  Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
  
  , and others during the 1920s (Carnap 1958: 197–212);
- Biology, by Joseph Woodger (1937), also during the 1930s (Carnap 1958: 213–20):
- Mechanics, by Suppes (1957: 291–305) and others during the 1950s.

The objectives of the 'Symbolator' or 'idea-computer' (Goppold 1994) resemble in some respects a less ambitious version of the characteristica universalis.

Connections with the Jewish Cabbala
Kabbala
Kabbala may refer to:*Kabbalah, is a religious philosophical system claiming an insight into divine nature*Sefer ha-Qabbalah by Abraham ibn Daud*Kabbala Denudata , a book from Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, a Christian Hebraist...

, and the International auxiliary language policy
Bahá'í Faith and auxiliary language
The Bahá'í Faith teaches that the world should adopt an international auxiliary language, which people would use in addition to their mother tongue. The aim of this teaching is to improve communication and foster unity among peoples and nations...

of the Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'í Faith
The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....

have also been made.

The characteristic has also been claimed as an ancestor of the pictographic Energy Systems Language
Energy Systems Language
The Energy Systems Language , also referred to as Energese, Energy Circuit Language and Generic Systems Symbols, was developed by the ecologist Howard T. Odum and colleagues in the 1950s during studies of the tropical forests funded by the United States Atomic Energy Commission...

and associated Emergy Synthesis
Emergy synthesis
Emergy synthesis is a method employing emergy algebra for combining the constituent elements of separate materials or abstract entities into a single or unified entity or system. The conception of synthesis is formally analogous to the concept used by electronic engineers Emergy synthesis is a...

of Odum
Howard T. Odum
Howard Thomas Odum was an American ecologist...

's Systems Ecology
Systems ecology
Systems ecology is an interdisciplinary field of ecology, taking a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems, especially ecosystems. Systems ecology can be seen as an application of general systems theory to ecology. Central to the systems ecology approach is the idea that an ecosystem...

(Cevolatti and Maud, 2004). The Energy Systems Language combines lines and points with "a kind of pictures" manipulated by means of digital computers and software packages like EXTEND(tm) (Odum, Odum, and Peterson 1995), and Valyi's Emergy Simulator. It was designed to provide a general systems language affording quantitative accounting and mathematical simulation of qualitative energy relationships between ecological entities: "that science in which are treated the forms or formulas of things in general, that is, quality in general". A general algebra known as the emergy algebra
Emergy
Emergy is the available energy of one kind that is used up in transformations directly and indirectly to make a product or service. Emergy accounts for, and in effect, measures quality differences between forms of energy. Emergy is an expression of all the energy used in the work processes that...

emerged out of the repeated use of this language in modelling and simulating the energetic principles
Energetics
Energetics is the study of energy under transformation. Because energy flows at all scales, from the quantum level to the biosphere and cosmos, energetics is a very broad discipline, encompassing for example thermodynamics, chemistry, biological energetics, biochemistry and ecological energetics...

of ecological relations. In particular it afforded the discovery and demonstration of the maximum power principle
Maximum power principle
The maximum power principle has been proposed as the fourth principle of energetics in open system thermodynamics, where an example of an open system is a biological cell. According to Howard T...

, suggested as the fourth law of thermodynamics. If this ancestral claim is granted, then simulation software like EXTEND(tm) and Valyi's Emergy Simulator can be seen as combining the characteristica and the Calculus ratiocinator
Calculus ratiocinator
The Calculus Ratiocinator is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned characteristica universalis, a universal conceptual language....

, if and only if the digital computer is interpreted as a physical embodiment of the calculus ratiocinator.

The work of Mario Bunge
Mario Bunge
Mario Augusto Bunge is an Argentine philosopher and physicist mainly active in Canada.-Biography:Bunge began his studies at the National University of La Plata, graduating with a Ph.D. in physico-mathematical sciences in 1952. He was professor of theoretical physics and philosophy,...

on the border of physics and metaphysics seems grounded in metaphysical presuppositions similar to those of Leibniz's characterisitica.

Lojban
Lojban
See also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...

(and its older version Loglan
Loglan
Loglan is a constructed language originally designed for linguistic research, particularly for investigating the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis. The language was developed beginning in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown with the goal of making a language so different from natural languages that people learning...

) are both artificial languages derived from predicate logic
Predicate logic
In mathematical logic, predicate logic is the generic term for symbolic formal systems like first-order logic, second-order logic, many-sorted logic or infinitary logic. This formal system is distinguished from other systems in that its formulae contain variables which can be quantified...

, and intended for use in human communication.

Charles K. Bliss
Charles K. Bliss
Charles K. Bliss was a chemical engineer and semiotician, inventor of Blissymbolics. He was born in Austria, and got the Australian citizenship.-Early life:...

's Blissymbolics, presently used as an 'alternative and augmentative language' for disabled people but originally intended as an International 'Auxlang', is said to be in the mold of the Characteristica.

External links

Corazzon, Raul, 2010, "Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium". Includes bibliography, links to online papers, and passages from the writings of Jaakko Hintikka
Jaakko Hintikka
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka is a Finnish philosopher and logician.Hintikka was born in Vantaa. After teaching for a number of years at Florida State University, Stanford, University of Helsinki, and the Academy of Finland, he is currently Professor of Philosophy at Boston University...

and Jean Van Heijenoort
Jean Van Heijenoort
Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort was a pioneer historian of mathematical logic. He was also a personal secretary to Leon Trotsky from 1932 to 1939, and from then until 1947, an American Trotskyist activist.-Life:Van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France...

.
Rotha, Paul, 1946, "From Hieroglyphs to Isotypes".
Smith, Barry, 1978, "" Grazer Philosophische Studien 6: 39–62.
—, 1990, "" in K. Mulligan, ed., Language, Truth and Ontology, (Philosophical Studies Series). Kluwer: 50–81.

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International communication

A universal language of science

Metaphysics

Science

His diagrammatic reasoning

Leibniz loses will

Three criteria

A common scientific language

Gödel alleges conspiracy

Related 17th century projects

More recent projects

See also

External links