Classifying the world: John Wilkins and the invention of a universal language

I decided to allow my inner geek have a trip out, and so we went to the talk at Magdalen College Library ‘Classifying the world: John Wilkins and the invention of a universal language’, by Tabitha Tuckett, who is one of the librarians there.

John Wilkins was a clergyman and scientist from the seventeenth century who decided to try and make up his own language, to be understood by all, and his method of doing so was essentially to classify the world. As Wikipedia says, it was “brilliant but hopeless”.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I mostly associate language invention with Tolkien, and my immediate mental image of an invented universal language is something like Esperanto. Wilkins’s invention of a universal language was different to both.He did not base his language on other European languages, rather, he believed that the way to achieve a language to be characterised by ease and usefulness was to base it on a logical system of classification. He would use categories and subcategories to create building blocks for conveying meaning, and attach phonemes to each building block to create words.

In the seventeenth century there was a movement to try and bring about a universal language, to create a language that could be understood by all. This movement was in part brought about by the decline in Latin as a lingua franca, and also by the increase in travel to parts of the world where the people spoke languages nothing like the European ones.

Wilkins developed a system of hierarchical classification, which he intended to be both spoken and written. The gist I got was that Wilkins’s aim was to arrange all human knowledge into categories, like Linnaeus would later do (with more success) with plants. He tried to arrange all of human knowledge into categories. Wilkins started with a broad concept, represented by one letter, and then added suffix after suffix to narrow it down. He had forty broad categories (genuses), ranging from God to disease to stones. Each genus could then be divided into sub categories, to aid the defining of them. Stones, for example, could then be divided into vulgar stones, middle prized, or precious; dissolvable and non-dissolvable. And vulgar stones could furthermore be sub categorised into greater or lesser magnitude, and so on.

His work then becomes of interest to linguists. I found the relationship between Wilkins’s language to his script and pronunciation quite hard to grasp. He developed a script, all squiggles, represented meaning directly. This means that his words could be written without ever being spoken, and his language was more of a classification scheme than a language that Tolkien might have made up.

I found it extremely interesting, especially how his language was limited by the inability to classify the extent of human knowledge. It was also limited by issues with tense and voice, and was a very brusque way of communicating. Nevertheless, it was fascinating to see how even attempting to add a classification system to the world could create a comprehendible language.

Twelve reasons why librarians rule the world!

My supervisor sent this link to a blog post around by email today and I thought it was really interesting so I would just like to share it with all of you. I think it shows the significance of librarians and libraries which is not always apparent to people.

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2010/02/twelve-theses-on-libraries-and.html

Library & Information Update: Master’s Supplement

I was shown this by our librarian, and thought I should pass it along! The latest issue of CILIP’s Library & Information Update contains a supplement dedicated to the discussion of Master’s courses – including choosing a course, funding, how helpful it is in terms of finding a job, and so on. The supplement is also available to view online.

Libraries ‘must modernise’ to secure future

Another interesting news story caught my eye this week from the BBC website- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8388352.stm. Working at the Bodleian, I am constantly reminded that major changes are just around the corner, especially now the Special Collections decant has begun. The introduction of ICT into libraries has brought about a massive change in their purpose and function and perhaps more importantly reader expectations. I know that I am very used to receiving information immediately via the Internet and often have little patience when I have to wait for documents to arrive by post when I could simply click a button on-line. Similarly, readers in the Bod sometimes look horrified that they should have to wait three hours to get the book they need from the Stack. For me, there is no substitute for curling up with a good book, even if I have to wait for it, but an expansion in e-resources and electronic learning has significantly sped up access to and sharing of information.

The article also got me thinking about previous blog posts- it definitely picks up on ideas raised by Charlie’s post about the purpose and function of a library and the last paragraph also reminded me of James’ post on rare books- a loyalty card and home delivery service? Is this simply taking customer service one step too far?