CONTENTS
Series Editor's Preface = ⅸ
introduction = 1
1 From Adam to Confusio Linguarum = 7
Genesis 2, 10, 11 = 7
Before and After Europe = 10
Side-effects = 19
A Semiotic Model for Natural Language = 20
2 The Kabbalistic Pansemioticism = 25
The Reading of the Torah = 25
Cosmic Permutability and the Kabbala of Names = 28
The Mother Tongue = 32
3 The Perfect Language of Dante = 34
Latin and the Vernacular = 35
Language and Linguistic Behaviour = 38
The First Gift to Adam = 40
Dante and Universal Grammar = 43
The Illustrious Vernacular = 45
Dante and Abulafia = 46
4 The Ars Magna of Raymond Lull = 53
The Elements of the Ars Combinatoria = 54
The Alphabet and the Four Figures = 56
The Arbor Scientarium = 64
The Concordia Universalis of Nicholas of Cusa = 69
5 The Monogenetic Hypothesis and the Mother Tongues = 73
The Return to Hebrew = 74
Postel's Universalistic Utopia = 75
The Etymological Furor = 80
Conventionalism, Epicureanism and Polygenesis = 85
The Pre-Hebraic Language = 91
The Nationalistic Hypotheses = 95
The Indo-European Hypothesis = 103
Philosophers against Monogeneticism = 106
A Dream that Refused to Die = 111
New Prospects for the Monogenetic Hypothesis = 115
6 Kabbalism and Lullism in Modern Culture = 117
Magic Names and Kabbalistic Hebrew = 119
Kabbalism and Lullism in the Steganographies = 126
Lullian Kabbalism = 128
Bruno: Ars Combinatoria and Infinite Worlds = 132
Infinite Songs and Locutions = 139
7 The Perfect Language of Images = 144
Horapollo's Hieroglypbica = 145
The Egyptian Alphabet = 146
Kircher's Egyptology = 154
Kircher's Chinese = 158
The Kircherian Ideoiogy = 162
Later Critics = 166
The Egyptian vs. the Chinese Way = 168
Images for Aliens = 176
8 Magic Language = 178
Hypotheses = 182
Dee's Magic Language = 185
Perfection and Secrecy = 190
9 Polygraphies = 194
Kircher's Polygraphy = 196
Beck and Becher = 201
First Attempts at a Content Organization = 203
10 A Priori Philosophical Languages = 209
Bacon = 211
Comenius = 214
Descartes and Mersenne = 216
The English Debate on Character and Traits = 218
Primitives and Organization of Content = 221
11 George Dalgarno = 228
12 John Wilkins = 238
The Tables and the Grammar = 239
The Real Characters = 242
The Dictionary: Synonyms, Periphrases, Metaphors = 245
An Open Classification? = 248
The Limits of Classification = 251
The Hypertext of Wilkins = 258
13 Francis Lodwick = 260
14 From Leibniz to the Encyclop e ´ die = 269
Characteristica and Calculus = 271
The Problem of the Primitives = 275
The Encyclopedia and the Alphabet of Thought = 278
Blind Thought = 279
The I Ching and the Binary Calculus = 284
Side-effects = 287
The 'Library' of Leibniz and the Encyclop e ´ die = 288
15 Philosophic Language from the Enlightenment to Today = 293
Eighteenth-century Projects = 293
The Last Flowering of Philosophic Languages = 302
Space Languages = 308
Artificial Intelligence = 310
Some Ghosts of the Perfect Language = 312
16 The International Auxiliary Languages = 317
The Mixed Systems = 319
The Babel of A Posteriori Languages = 321
Esperanto = 324
An Optimized Grammar = 327
Theoretical Objections and Counter-objections = 330
The 'Political' Possibilities of an IAL = 332
Limits and Effability of an IAL = 335
17 Conclusion = 337
Translation = 344
The Gift to Adam = 351
Notes = 354
Bibliography = 355
Index = 372
