Another Short History of Linguistics (70)

1753 Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus effectively worked out his Species Plantarum. It was the beginning of binary nomenclature

According: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001127

There are around 8.7 million biologic specie could exist on the earth, if we name them one by one, then no one can remember even 1% of them. Yet after Linnaeus invent the binary nomenclature, all words turned to be like compound words, or like the structure of Chinese word. The so called binary nomenclature is in fact most the genus names combined with species names, supposing once you remembered 3,000 basic genus, with the help of some species name you may easily master all the 8.7 million name of species. (Only 1.3 million of them has been discovered and named) not only reduced the work of remembrance but classified all biological species according semantics. Since 3,000x3, 000=9,000,000.

Above, we have talking about how to build a vocabulary system in semantic way, now let’s check how we withdrew a certain word from our storage in mind. But first of all, we have to repeat again that any knowledge, without input into your mind before, it would be a knowledge irrelevant with you. Only inputted in your mind already, then we can use them to analysis the world. That is why to keep a huge vocabulary in your mind is important. The following picture shows how the address is located in your mind.

 Many scholars believe, without the binary nomenclature, there would no Darwinist, for no one can master such quantity biologic names, without mastering their name, no one can comparing them properly. And the later chemistry introduced the same nomenclature.

For this reason, I believe that when the world take a similar vocabulary system for the international language, more and more hidden Darwin would appeared. And I believe if using the character to name the biologic species, all the name would shorter than current names.

Obviously the Binomial nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus (1707 –1778) get inspiration from characteristica universalis of Leibniz Of course, the vocabulary of a natural language won’t be clearly arranged like this. But they are the same trick.

If the European scholar kept study the idea of Leibniz, then perhaps some of the European language have turned semantic idea from a metaphysic language into a real physic language already. But at that point, the politic situation changed. For the English didn’t like Leibniz.