English mathematician, scientist and bishop, 1614-1672, author of Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, The Discovery of a World in the Moon and other works
Fishburn and Hughes: "An English bishop who began his career as chaplain at the court of Charles I. Later he was a strong supporter of Cromwell, who appointed him Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Deprived of this post at the Restoration, Wilkins nevertheless became bishop of Chester. He was interested in science and became one of the founders, and the first secretary, of the Royal Society. He wrote an unusual work on the possibility of life in the moon and a book entitled An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668 In the latter work Wilkins develops the possibility of a universal language based on the principle that reality can be divided into arbitrary categories whose members can be systematically renamed from words with the same roots. Borges speaks of the fascination that this project holds for him because of its totally arbitrary nature and, above all, its attempt to schematise and rationalise an otherwise chaotic and incomprehensible reality (TL 229). See Descartes, Leibniz." (211)