ABSTRACT
The shift in the appreciation of science ran in parallel with projects to devise a universal and philosophical language that would stimulate and facilitate scientific advancement. The benefits of a universal language appeared evident: by eradicating the problems derived from the multiplicity of tongues, international communication would improve, and even at a domestic scale this would solve the issue of the "Babellish confusion' of Renaissance English'. The internationality of astronomical symbols and the languages of music, chemistry, and mathematics served as inspiration to seventeenth-century scientists with linguistic concerns, many of whom were, not coincidentally, mathematicians. Bacon regarded as imperfections of language words for things that do not exist, the arbitrary assignment of names to things, ambiguity of meaning, metaphorical language, phraseology, grammatical irregularities and exceptions, synonymy, and the mismatch between orthography and pronunciation. It would be a far more accurate vehicle for the representation of knowledge and reality than natural languages.
