Figure 5.1 shows Wilkins’s tree of the universe, with his forty numbered categories as the bottom nodes. The first division, general versus special, separates the big abstract metaphysical ideas (notions like existence, truth, and good) from the stuff of the world (the notions those ideas can apply to). This division was consistent with the philosophy of categories, descended from Plato and Aristotle, as practiced at the time. The division between substances and accident (at the second node under “special”) also comes from this tradition. Substances are answers to the question, What is this? and accidents are answers to the question, How/in what way/of what quality is this? A glance at the table will show that these distinctions do not always hold up very well, but, as Wilkins was quite aware, the philosophy was incomplete and this was as good a place to start as any.
The bottom nodes of this tree, the forty main categories, are themselves top-level categories in their own sprawling trees. For example, if we zoom in on category XVIII, “Beasts,” we find it further divided into six subcategories, as shown in figure 5.2.
It doesn’t stop there. Lift a subcategory and you find a tree of sub-subcategories that get even more specific. So under category XVIII (Beasts), subcategory V (oblong-headed), you will find six sub-subcategories under which specific animals are finally named (as shown in figure 5.3).
Figure 5.1: Wilkins’s tree of the universe
Figure 5.2: Subcategories of beasts
Figure 5.3: Subcategories of oblong-headed beasts
Each one of his forty top-level categories expands in this manner into multiple sub- and sub-sub trees. A place is provided for everything from “porcupine” (substances > animate > sensate > sanguineous > beast > clawed > non-rapacious) to “dignity” (accident > quality > habit > instruments of virtue > concerning our conditions in relation to others) to “potentialness” (transcendentals > general > quality > degree of being). We are dealing with an enormous magnum opus here.
But why was all this necessary? What does the idea of a mathematics of language have to do with a gigantic conceptual map of the universe?
We have seen that a mathematics of language required two things: a list of the basic units of meaning, and a knowledge of how everything else was to be derived from those units. In Lodwick’s system “to understand,” “one who …,” and “proper name” were primitives, and “man” was derived from the combination of those three primitives. Man was defined as the one who understands. For Leibniz the primitives were rational and animal, and man was derived by the combination of those primitives—the rational animal. Well, which is it? Is man the rational animal or the understander? It depends on the primitives you’re working with. And finding the right set of primitives depends on finding the right definition. Now, the rational animal and the understander are pretty similar definitions for man—they both focus on man’s capacity to think—but man could be defined in other ways. Why not the upright-walking animal? Or (after Plato) the featherless biped?
Upright walking does not work, because, while it is a pretty distinguishing characteristic of man, it is not the distinguishing characteristic. Apes walk pretty upright, and even a dog can walk upright if properly motivated. And as for the featherless-biped idea, Diogenes the Cynic responded to it by brandishing a plucked chicken and proclaiming, “Behold, Plato’s man!” A description of man that lets you pick out man as opposed to something else is dependent not so much on the characteristics man has as on the characteristic that everything else does not have.
And that characteristic, it was commonly supposed, was the capacity to reason. Naturally, the people who were concerned with big questions like the essential nature of man—the philosophers—held this characteristic in high regard. After all, it was the tool of their trade. So they may have failed to focus on other human characteristics that are arguably just as distinguishing. Why is man not the vengeful animal or, in the words of G. K. Chesterton, “the animal who makes dogmas” or, in the words of Ambrose Bierce, the “animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be”?
Depends on what’s important in your philosophy. Descartes thought the philosophical language idea was doomed because it required you to first figure out the true philosophy. Wilkins thought the philosophical language idea was possible because all you needed was a pretty good philosophy. Though he aimed to make his system “exactly suited to the nature of things,” he acknowledged that it fell short. He didn’t know the Truth, but he had some not completely unreasonable opinions about it. They were, however, still opinions, and therefore informed by his own idiosyncratic viewpoint and the particular preoccupations of the times he lived in. Had he been younger or older when he crafted his tables (he was in his early fifties when he finished), he may not have categorized the age “betwixt the 50th and 60th year” as the “most perfect for the Mind … the Age of Wisdom.” Had he not lived in the seventeenth century, he may not have categorized “witchcraft” under judicial relations > capital crimes. Had he not lived in England, he may not have included a whole category of terms for ship rigging. The parrel, jeers, and buntline all get their rightful places in the universe of Wilkins.
So, to sum up the progression from “let’s make a math for language” to “let’s make a hierarchy of the universe”:
1. To make a math for language, you need to know what the basic units of meaning are, and how we compute more complicated concepts out of them.
2. To figure both of these things out, you need an idea of how concepts break down into smaller concepts.
3. To break down the concepts, you need a satisfactory definition for those concepts; you have to know what things are.
4. In order to know what something is, you have to distinguish it from everything it is not.
5. Because you have to distinguish it from everything, you have to include everything in your system. So there you are, crafting your six-hundred-page table of the universe.
Do you get the sense that each step in this progression doesn’t necessarily follow from the last one? So did George Dalgarno. He was a Scottish schoolmaster of humble means who moved to Oxford in 1657 in order to start a school. After attending a demonstration of a new type of shorthand that could express phrases in “a more compendious way than any I had seen,” he was inspired to “advance it a step further.” In the process of working out how to stuff the most meaning into the fewest possible symbols, he realized that such a system could be used not just as a shorthand for English but as a universal writing that could be read off into any language. He was “struck with such a complicated passion of admiration, fear, hope and joy” at this idea that he “had not one houres natural rest for the 3 following nights together.”
His idea wasn’t as original as he thought. Quite a few scholars of the time had become preoccupied with developing a “real character.” This was the term used by the philosopher Francis Bacon to describe Chinese writing—it was “real” in that the symbols represented not sounds, or words, but ideas. Traveling missionaries of the previous century had noted that people who spoke mutually incomprehensible languages—Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Vietnamese—could understand each other in writing. They got the impression that Chinese characters by-passed language entirely, and went right to the heart of the matter. This impression was mistaken (we will discuss how Chinese characters do work in chapter 15), but it encouraged a general optimistic excitement about the possibility of a universal real character.