Taxonomic language

This is a fascinating little article by Borges (my interest is that I've just started to read Funes El Memorioso from Ficciones) El Idioma Analítico de John Wilkins: It's an article on John Wilkin's taxonomic language. It ends with a point that touches on my theological concerns labelled on this blog 'homo loquens'.

La imposibilidad de penetrar el esquema divino del universo no puede, sin embargo, disuadirnos de planear esquemas humanos, aunque nos conste que éstos son provisorios. El idioma analítico de Wilkins no es el menoos admirable de esos esquemas. Los géneros y especies que lo componen son contradictorios y vagos; el artificio de que las letras de las palabras indiquen subdivisiones y divisiones es, sin duda, ingenioso. La palabra salmón no nos dice nada; zana, la voz correspondiente, define (para el hombre versado en las cuarenta categorías y en los géneros de esas categorías) un pez escamoso, fluvial, de carne rojiza. (Teóricamente, no es inconcebible un idioma donde el nombre de cada ser indicara todos los pormenores de su destino, pasado y venidero.)*

I think I'd agree and add that while it's a great attempt at scientific language. But it wouldn't do well for poets: where are the plays on words, the stretching of word classes, the playing off connotative meaning? In any case, because of all those things it would quickly be hijacked and the messiness of linguistic change would set in. People would use words to mean something else, instabilities would set in.

Anyway, Borges is right about the penetrating of the divine pattern and planning human patterns. In fact, it seems to me that giving names to the animals (which is just what Wilkins' schema seems set on doing) is precisely a divine-sanctioned endeavour. The point is to bear in mind their provisionality and likelihood to be contradictory. And they have to be vague, specifying everything would defeat the point of naming: you'd never be able to refer and make connections that were not immediately evident. It is this issue that the aforementioned Funes el Memorioso explores: a man who could remember everything in detail and so began to name everything individually ...

Wilkins was a Church of England cleric as well as a proto cryptographer (at both Oxford and Cambridge), he was Bishop of Chester at one point. I wonder what he made of the naming of the animals?

*[The impossibility of penetrating the divine pattern of the universe cannot stop us from planning human patterns, even though we are concious they are not definitive. The analytic language of Wilkins is not the least admirable of such patterns. The classes and species that compose it are contradictory and vague; the nimbleness of letters in the words meaning subdivisions and divisions is, no doubt, gifted. The word salmon does not tell us anything; zana, the corresponding word, defines (for the man knowing the forty categories and the species of these categories) a scaled river fish, with ruddy meat. (Theoretically, it is not impossible to think of a language where the name of each thing says all the details of its destiny, past and future).]