ABSTRACT
1. The creation of a precise language for philosophy, using the language of the exact sciences as its model, is a problem which has troubled logicians since most ancient times. Undoubtedly Aristotle’s syllogistic logic, Raymond Lull’s Ars magna, the characteristica generalis of Leibniz and Spinoza’s Ethica more geometrico demonstrata were all attempts to solve this problem. Needless to say these attempts all proved illusory although their authors attributed very great significance to them. How much Leibniz expected of his discovery the following passages give evidence:
“During my eighteenth year, while writing the little book De arte combinatoria, published two years later, I hit upon a certain line of thought, the wonderful secret of true analysis, whose result is language or rational characteristic. I believe that no one else has perceived this, for anyone who had done so would have put all else aside and pursued it since nothing greater can be achieved by any man.” 1
“This is the principal aim of that great science which I have been accustomed to call characteristic, of which what we call Algebra or Analysis is only a very small branch. It is characteristic which gives the words to languages, the letters to words, the figures to arithmetic, the notes to music…. Finally it is characteristic which permits us to reason with but little effort by substituting symbols for things in order not to hamper thought.” 2
