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This book examines the seventeenth-century project for a "real" or "universal" character: a scientific and objective code. Focusing on the Essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language (1668) of the polymath John Wilkins, Fleming provides a detailed explanation of how a real character actually was supposed to work. He argues that the period movement should not be understood as a curious episode in the history of language, but as an illuminating avatar of information technology. A non-oral code, supposedly amounting to a script of things, the character was to support scientific discourse through a universal database, in alignment with cosmic truths. In all these ways, J.D. Fleming argues, the world of the character bears phenomenological comparison to the world of modern digital information-what has been called the infosphere.
Sommario
Introduction.- Mercurial messages: What is information?.- Unreal characters: Orality and technology in seventeenth-century England.- Through a glass, literally: From shorthand to Wilkins's Essay.- The next big thing: How the real character works.- The Circularity: Or, how to end the world.
Info autore
James Dougal Fleming is Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He studies the history and theory of interpretation and understanding. In 2012, he co-founded the international conference series
Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World. This is his third book.
Riassunto
This book examines the seventeenth-century project for a "real" or "universal" character: a scientific and objective code. Focusing on the Essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language (1668) of the polymath John Wilkins, Fleming provides a detailed explanation of how a real character actually was supposed to work. He argues that the period movement should not be understood as a curious episode in the history of language, but as an illuminating avatar of information technology. A non-oral code, supposedly amounting to a script of things, the character was to support scientific discourse through a universal database, in alignment with cosmic truths. In all these ways, J.D. Fleming argues, the world of the character bears phenomenological comparison to the world of modern digital information—what has been called the infosphere.
Testo aggiuntivo
“Fleming’s is an engaging … book that provides an important addition to existing scholarship on the oddly early modern preoccupation with the need for a universal language.” (Allison B. Kavey, Metascience, September 5, 2019)
Relazione
"Fleming's is an engaging ... book that provides an important addition to existing scholarship on the oddly early modern preoccupation with the need for a universal language." (Allison B. Kavey, Metascience, September 5, 2019)
