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Source: Sämtliche schriften und briefe series VI volume 4 Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed) p 916 Date: summer 1688 (?) Translated from the Latin View this translation in PDF format (11k) Back to home page Search texts by keyword(s): (For search strings, just type the words; don't use quotation marks) |
LEIBNIZ: ON SYMBOLS AND THE CHARACTERISTIC ART[A VI 4, p916] I call a symbol a visible sign representing thoughts. The characteristic art is thus the art of forming and ordering symbols so that they reproduce thoughts, i.e. so that they have the relation to each other that thoughts have to each other. An expression is an aggregate of symbols representing the thing which is expressed. The law of expressions is this: just as the idea of a thing to be expressed is composed from the ideas of those things, an expression of a thing is composed from the symbols for those things. © Lloyd Strickland 2007-08 |