Related Efforts, Discussions, and Literary References
The Essay has received a certain amount of academic and literary attention, usually casting it as brilliant but hopeless.
One criticism (among many) is that "words expressing closely related ideas have almost the same form, differing perhaps by their last letter only...t would be exceedingly difficult to remember all these minute distinctions, and confusion would arise, in rapid reading and particularly in conversation." (Umberto Eco notes that Wilkins himself made such a mistake in the Essay, using Gαde (barley) where apparently Gαpe (tulip) was meant.)
George Edmonds sought to improve Wilkins' Philosophical Language by reorganizing its grammar and orthography while keeping its taxonomy. More recent a priori languages (among many others) are Solresol and Ro.
Jorge Luis Borges discusses Wilkins' philosophical language in his essay El idioma analítico de John Wilkins (The Analytical Language of John Wilkins), comparing Wilkins’ classification to the fictitious Chinese encyclopedia Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge and expressing doubts about any attempt at a universal classification.
In Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, character Daniel Waterhouse spends considerable time supporting the development of Wilkins' classification system.
Read more about this topic: An Essay Towards A Real Character And A Philosophical Language
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