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Characteristica Universalis
The Latin term ''characteristica universalis'', commonly interpreted as ''universal characteristic'', or ''universal character'' in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by Gottfried Leibniz 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''. The ''characteristica universalis'' is a recurring concept in the writings of Leibniz. 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. Uses 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, or ideographic language. This was to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, Latin influence in English, including English, having contributed List of Latin words with English derivatives, many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin Root (linguistics), roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, the sciences, List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes, medicine, and List of Latin legal terms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which study the physical world, and the social sciences, which study individuals and societies. While referred to as the formal sciences, the study of logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science are typically regarded as separate because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method as their main methodology. Meanwhile, applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine. The history of science spans the majority of the historical record, with the earliest identifiable predecessors to modern science dating to the Bronze Age in Ancient Egypt, Egypt and Mesopotamia (). Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped the Gree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pictograms
A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a writing system which uses pictograms. Some pictograms, such as hazard pictograms, may be elements of formal languages. In the field of prehistoric art, the term "pictograph" has a different definition, and specifically refers to art painted on rock surfaces. Pictographs are contrasted with petroglyphs, which are carved or incised. Small pictograms displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate are called '' icons''. Historical Early written symbols were based on pictograms (pictures which resemble what they signify) and ideograms (symbols which represent ideas). Ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations began to adapt such symbols to represent concepts, developing them into logographic writing systems. Pic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logogram
In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese characters as used in Chinese as well as other languages are logograms, as are Egyptian hieroglyphs and characters in cuneiform script. A writing system that primarily uses logograms is called a ''logography''. Non-logographic writing systems, such as alphabets and syllabaries, are ''phonemic'': their individual symbols represent sounds directly and lack any inherent meaning. However, all known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the rebus principle, and the addition of a phonetic component to pure ideographs is considered to be a key innovation in enabling the writing system to adequately encode human language. Types of logographic systems Some of the earliest recorded writing systems are logographic; th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pictographs
A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a writing system which uses pictograms. Some pictograms, such as hazard pictograms, may be elements of formal languages. In the field of prehistoric art, the term "pictograph" has a different definition, and specifically refers to art painted on rock surfaces. Pictographs are contrasted with petroglyphs, which are carved or incised. Small pictograms displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate are called '' icons''. Historical Early written symbols were based on pictograms (pictures which resemble what they signify) and ideograms (symbols which represent ideas). Ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations began to adapt such symbols to represent concepts, developing them into logographic writing systems. Pic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher (; ; 15 July 1928 – 5 January 2024) was a German-born American philosopher, polymath, and author, who was a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh from 1961. He was chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and chairman of the philosophy department. Rescher served as president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Leibniz Society of North America, American Metaphysical Society, American Philosophical Association, and Charles S. Peirce Society. He was the founder of '' American Philosophical Quarterly'', '' History of Philosophy Quarterly'', and '' Public Affairs Quarterly''. He died in Pittsburgh on January 5, 2024, at the age of 95. Early life and education Rescher was born in Hagen in the Westphalia region of Germany. In his autobiography he traces his descent to Nehemias Rescher (1735–1801), a founder of the Hochberg-Remseck Jewish community in Swabian Germany. He relocated to the United States when he was 10 an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Society of Jesus, Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Joseph Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his vast range of interests, and has been honoured with the title "Master of a Hundred Arts".Woods, p. 108. He taught for more than 40 years at the Roman College, where he set up a wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities that would become the Kircherian Museum. A resurgence of interest in Kircher has occurred within the scholarly community in recent decades. Kircher claimed to have deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptian language, but most of his assumptions and translations in the field turned out to be wrong. He did, however, correctly establish the link between the ancient Egyptian and the Coptic language, Coptic languages, and some com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leroy Loemker
Leroy E. Loemker (December 28, 1900 – November 28, 1985) was an American philosopher and historian of philosophy, best known for his scholarship on the works of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Over the course of his career, Loemker made significant contributions to the study of early modern philosophy and the intellectual history of the seventeenth century. Biography Leroy Earl Loemker was born December 28, 1900, in Platteville, Wisconsin, the son of German immigrant parents. Loemker graduated from the University of Dubuque in 1921 and Boston University in 1927. He served as a professor of philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ..., where he was instrumental in developing the institution’s philosophy program. Scholarship ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Cassirer
Ernst Alfred Cassirer ( ; ; July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science. After Cohen's death in 1918, Cassirer developed a theory of symbolism and used it to expand the " logic and psychology of thought" into a more general " logic of the cultural sciences". Cassirer was one of the leading 20th-century advocates of philosophical idealism. His most famous work is the ''Philosophy of Symbolic Forms'' (1923–1929). Though his work received a mixed reception shortly after his death, more recent scholarship has remarked upon Cassirer's role as a strident defender of the moral idealism of the Enlightenment era and the cause of liberal democracy at a time when the rise of fascism had made such advocacy unfashionable. Within the international Jewish community, Cassirer's work has additionall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Gode
Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von Aesch (October 30, 1906 – August 10, 1970) was a German-born 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 University of Paris before leaving for the U.S. and becoming a citizen in 1927. He was an instructor at the University of Chicago as well as Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in Germanic Studies in 1939. Alexander Gode died of cancer in hospital. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Johanna. Gode was survived by two daughters from his first marriage, his second wife Alison, and their two children. Interlingua Gode was involved with the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) from 1933 on, sporadically at first. In 1936 the IALA began development of a new international auxiliary language and in 1939 Gode was hired to assist in this w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hartley Rogers
Hartley Rogers Jr. (July 6, 1926 – July 17, 2015) was an American mathematician who worked in computability theory, and was a professor in the Mathematics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Biography Born in 1926 in Buffalo, New York, Rogers studied English as an undergraduate at Yale University, graduating in 1946. After visiting the University of Cambridge under a Henry Fellowship, he returned to Yale for a master's degree in physics, which he completed in 1950. He studied mathematics under Alonzo Church at Princeton, earned a second master's degree in 1951, and received his Ph.D. there in 1952. He was a Benjamin Peirce Lecturer at Harvard University from 1952 to 1955. After holding a visiting position at MIT, he became a professor in the MIT Mathematics Department in 1956. His doctoral students included Patrick Fischer, Louis Hodes, Carl Jockusch, Andrew Kahr, David Luckham, Rohit Parikh, David Park, and John Stillwell. He chaired the MIT faculty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
