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Characteristica universalis

Index: Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote, Ficciones, OC,Obras completas. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974. 445. Pierre Menard, CQ,Cervantes y el Quijote. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2005. 37.

Leibniz

Fishburn and Hughes: "Universal characteristic': the subject of numerous articles, memoranda and letters of Leibniz dating from all periods of his working life, including for example 'Elementa characteristicae universalis' (April 1679) in Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz (Paris 1903). The project, anticipated by Wilkins, Dalgarno and Descartes, stemmed from the idea of bringing mathematical methods to bear on every kind of intellectual problem. The universal characteristic was to have been at once an international language, a scientific notation, an instrument of discovery and a method of proof. Leibniz hoped that, by the development of such a characteristic supplanting the symbols of natural language, even moral and metaphysical questions could be worked out 'in much the same way as in geometry and analysis'." (45)