Characteristica Universalis
Characteristica Universalis
The name given by Leibniz to his projected (but only partially realized) “universal language” for the formulation of knowledge. This language was to be ideographic, with simple characters standing for simple concepts, and combinations of them for compound ideas, so that all knowledge could be expressed in terms which all could easily learn to use and understand. It represents an adumbration of the more recent and more successful logistic treatment of mathematics and science. It is to be distinguished, however, from the “universal calculus,” also projected by Leibniz, which was to be the instrument for the development and manipulation of systems in the universal language. — W.K.F.
L. Couturat, La Logique de Leibniz (1901).