John Wilkins Book Porn
There’s a fascimile edition of John Wilkin’s An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language available at Amazon.
Scans of the book’s content are available, as is a description at Wikipedia, but the best explanation of it is probably Borges’ The Analytical Language of John Wilkins. The most recent popularization of it was probably in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, where John Wilkins is a character.
The UW has a copy of the original in Special Collections, and an earlier fascimile edition from 1968. I’d recommend looking at the facsimile one if you have the time. I’m desirous of a fascimile copy of my own, because it’s fascinating and because I have this image of Wilkins as the ultimate erudite crank.
Array
Comment by solyak1 — 2006 March 15 @ 3:00 am