Overview
- Provides a new approach to the field of seventeenth-century studies and intellectual history
- Examines John Wilkins and the idea of a“real character” (the basis for a proposed universal communications) in terms of modern information theory and Gadamerian phenomenology
- Asks fundamental questions about IT on the seventeenth-century platform
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
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.
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Authors and Affiliations
About the author
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.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Mirror of Information in Early Modern England
Book Subtitle: John Wilkins and the Universal Character
Authors: James Dougal Fleming
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40301-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-40300-7Published: 04 November 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-82073-6Published: 27 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-40301-4Published: 26 October 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 292
Topics: Social History, Intellectual Studies, Language History, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Language