- Francis Lodwick
Francis Lodwick (or Lodowick) (1619–1694) was a pioneer of "a priori" languages (what in the seventeenth century was called a '
philosophical language '). He was a merchant of Dutch origin who lived inLondon . His name appears in"A Collection of the Names of the Merchants living in and about the City of London" (1677), with the address "Fan-church street".He did not have any higher education, and was admitted as a Fellow to theRoyal Society only at the age of 60.Lodowick may have been acquainted with
Daniel Defoe . Francis' nephew Charles (1658-1724), Mayor of New York City in 1694, signed at Defoe's marriage as a witness, and Francis may have introduced Defoe to "Roscommon's Academy", a group founded byLord Roscommon in 1683.Works
*1647 "A Common Writing: / Whereby two, although not under- / standing one the others Language, yet by / the helpe thereof, may communicate / their minds one to another. / Composed by a Well-willer to Learning. / Printed for the Author, / MDCXLVII.
*1652 "The / Ground-Work, / Or / Foundation Laid, / (or so intended) / For the Framing of a New Perfect / Language: / And an Vniversall or / Common Writing. / And presented to the consideration of / the Learned, / By a Well-willer to Learning. / Printed, Anno MDCLII."
*ca. 1675, "A Country Not Named"
*1686 "An Essay / Towards An / Universal Alphabet"ee also
*
John Wilkins
*George Dalgarno
*Cave Beck
*Lodwick's "Universal Alphabet" has been compared to theTengwar .References
*Cram, David and Jaap Maat, "Universal language schemes in the 17th century" In Auroux, Koerner, Niederehe, Versteegh (eds.), "History of the Language Sciences", Berlin/New York, Walter de Gruyter, 2000.
*Lewis, Rhodri, "The efforts of the Aubrey correspondence group to revise John Wilkins’ Essay (1668) and their context", Historiographia Linguistica 28 (2001), 331–364.
*Poole, William, "A Rare Early-Modern Utopia: Francis Lodwick’s A Country Not Named (c. 1675)", Utopian Studies 15 (2004), 115-37.
*Poole, William, "The Genesis Narrative in the Circle of Robert Hooke and Francis Lodwick" In Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England, Hessayon and Keene (eds.), Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
*Poole, William, "Francis Lodwick’s Creation: Theology and Natural Philosophy in the Early Royal Society.", Journal of the History of Ideas, 2005.
*Salmon, Vivian, "The Works of Francis Lodwick", London: Longman, 1972.External links
* [http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/research/lodwickbib/contents.htm Bibliography]
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