Theory of Categories in George Dalgarno's Treatise “Ars signorum”

Abstract

The paper deals with logical and epistemological grounds of the universal philosophical language created by G. Dalgarno and presented in his “Ars Signorum” (1661). The author argues that the predicamental series established by Dalgarno as a basis for the Lexicon of his artificial language is much more consistent than it was supposed to be by several researchers (M. Slaughter, J. Maat). Thus, the first division of highest genus “being” (ens, res) into “abstract being” and “concrete being” indicates the difference between mental and extra-mental beings which was a common place in metaphysical works of that time elaborated under the nominalistic influence (for example, in Suárez's “Disputationes Metaphysicae”). Accordingly, an unusual and even stricking trichotomous division of “ens” into “substance”, “accident” and “concrete” offered by Dalgarno instead of the traditional dichotomous scheme is quite reasonable as far as the terms “substance” and “accident” indicate mental concepts that refer to “the most common respects of the things”. The author concludes that Dalgarno's reform of predicamental series was aimed to refuse from scholastic essentialism and was deeply connected with Pansophia of J. Comenius. Thus, the main Dalgarno's point was to use as few radical words as possible in his Lexicon, because in this way a speaker could combine new words from them and so retain logical consistence of the whole speech, and it was the very same idea of Comenius that learning of languages should correlate with the investigation of things, so that the speaker should be able to think about the world order and about God as its first cause.