17042013

«THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE...»A Study about a hypothetical universal written language

By Guillaume DECHAMBENOIT

INSPIRED BY...

This paper has been inspired by Gottfried Leibniz’s idea : Characteristica universalis. He wanted to create a universal language based on the notion of ideas. Leibniz wanted to create a new way of thinking, he wanted to create, and I quote, «a sort of algebra of thought». After years of works, and a lack of interest from others on the subject, Leibniz lost will to continue what could have been, we like to think, a Master Piece.

We know we are not the only one to try to do this job, and others, smarter than us will probably do it faster and more efficiently than us, but we liked to propose something just for the «kick». Master Leibniz, we heard you, and we, too, will devote time and will to continue your legacy on this characteristica universalis.

THE MEMORY OF A PRIMER IDEA.Gottfried Leibniz wanted to create a common universal and formal language able to express mathematical, scientific and metaphysical concept. For that, he decided to use an ideographic and symbolic system similar to what we know in asiatic languages. With this system he could directly represent things and not words. He decided to use the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) as foundation of his pictograms, combined them and linked them to express more or less complex ideas by what he named diagrams. Basically, that’s all we seem to know of his idea for a universal language. Lot of minds tried and still try to understand where he wanted to go and what could have been this language.

FOR WHAT ?

First, what use could we have of a universal language ? We could certainly use it as a common ground to think together with hope to reduce oppositions in academic studies. Everyone is not necessary good with words but it doesn’t mean they are not able to have a perfect reasoning, so it could help them express their ideas. It could also allow people to concretely see and manipulate the relation between concept and ideas. Finally, why not use it as foundation for a new informatic language ?

THE MAIN IDEA OF A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

The word universal means it has to be common to and understood by every human beings. If this language existed, it would be so natural that even an analphabetic would be able to understand it. He should be innate and logic or at least the closest possible from this two concepts. The languages we use aren’t universal for one reason : the use of words. By understanding words and sentences we mean : extract from a written symbol a concept or a specific representation of an element from our environment. Trees, carrots, planes etc. All this words trigger different colors, shape, taste, smell... the more you know about or used to the carrot, the more this representation will be precise. Because they are concrete and common to most of the human species, these environmental objects are

what we call universal, not the words we use to express them. When you see a lamp, you know what we use it for, you know all the actions needed to manipulate it, we use the word «lamp» only to convey the concept of his idea to another being. Therefore, to build a universal language we need to get rid of the words and replace them by something else.

WHY MATHEMATICS CANNOT ENTIRELY DO THE JOB...Mathematics are, with no doubt, a universal symbolic language. Its abstraction is so deep that it can be adapted to any fields: literally, every ideas or concept can have its mathematical model. By their rules, it allows people from around the world, from different ethnic groups to understand each others. Mathematics have no generally accepted definition but in use it seems to express and somehow represents relations between elements, may they be physical, environmental, cognitive etc... so why saying that he is failing the purpose of the language we are looking for ? I think you’ll already have the reason : mathematics are not intuitive, they are complex and too codify. It takes years and years of learning, of time passing to accumulate knowledge to, at least, understand a part of them. Cognitively, you need to build a real «translator», add it, and connect it to your neurons. Our universal language will need to be directly connected to our system, without the need of other knowledge that our raw experience. In summary, he needs to be in perfect harmony with our natural way to think.

WHILE TALKING ABOUT COGNITION...This language must be, cognitively speaking, natural and intuitive. To achieve this goal, we will need to base his functioning on what we believe could be a way to see cognition. As we tried to develop in earlier papers (Dechambenoit, 2012) cognition may be something working under the notion of abstraction. Because we need to interact in real time with an environment, our «computing system» must be extremely fast to process all the informations contains at a t moment in our surroundings. Processing complex and realistic representation may cause a treatment speed problem. The solution may be to use more light element : abstract representations. Another advantage are that abstract objects may have different interpretation or meanings, but once confronted to a raw environment, these «readings» are reduced. It could be considered as a problem but in this particular case, it allows representations to be adaptable to many environmental situations. Abstraction provide us the power of adaptation and we are, with no doubts, beings of adaptation. How could we be able to link a concrete world to an abstract mind ? To resolve this equation, brains may be able to extract the second from the first by analyzing patterns spreaded all aver our environment. Compute this abstracts patterns, and you’ll have cognition. To be able to realize this «trick», evolution may have developed three levels of integration : Assembly, Schemes and Ideas. Assembly are the activation of first level neural networks by the stimulation of our sensory organs by raw physic (chemistry, light, frequencies etc.). Schemes are the activation of several Assembly, and

Ideas are the combination of activated schemes. The more you go up through the levels the more abstract the computation will be and the more adaptable the concepts will be. The last level, ideas, being specific to humans. Pure and magnificent ideas are simple concept able to be adapt to any environmental situation. We named this interpretation of cognition, the ISA theory. All of our cognitive functions : memory, language, experience, intellect, perception etc. may be based on this core system which we believe could be some kind of cognitive DNA. The language we want to make must take advantages of this system by directly activating ISA’s. So if we need to get rid of the words, we need to replace them by something closer to these abstract environmental patterns : pictograms.

IT WON’T BE EASY TO MAKE SOMETHING EASY...With this idea in mind, the point is not to say that simplicity will be the solution of the problem but simplicity must be part of it. The language we want to create is supposed to be accessible for everyone, and this can be achieve by creating something intuitive and simple. As modeled after our cognition, he must be adaptable and able to evolve to something more complex. But always, and no matter what, at every point of this evolution, the deciphering key must be as simple as possible and this is what will constitute the real challenge.

THE FOUNDATIONS

A language is a combinatory system. The basic principle is to use a cyphered system to associate basic elements together to express ideas and especially to communicate them to another being. It seems that the concept of ideas has already been encrypted into the definition of language. The problematic part being the design of this basic elements and how to connect them (the system): the ABC’s and the grammar.

Leibniz decided to use the four basics elements as bases. The problem was to represent them and he used pictures such as a cloud for air, landscape for earth, flames for fire and sea for water. For it to be more specific and prevent from any confusion he combined them with.... words, which didn’t resolve any of the problem.

So, if pictograms must be used as core system for this language then let’s use the most basic elements we need to make them : lines and curves. We could play with words and geometry by saying that curves are made of very small lines or dots making them THE only basics element needed, but because dots are made of curved lines and lines made of dots, we will gladly take a shortcut here and confirm our statement on lines and curves as primary blocks.

Leibniz’s choice for foundations

Our choice for foundations

With these two elements we can draw any geometric object we want: squares, triangles, circles etc... These shapes will lead to patterns which will target ISA’s and give us the right idea on what we want to expose. The more shape you use, the more specific your pattern will be and the more precise your representation will be.

So let’s try something by using lines and curves as ABC’s and patterns as words.

As an example, trial and start: how could we represent us, humans ? pretty simple in fact, by using what we all already used at least once in our lives.

Yes, it looks like a stickman that a 3 years old child could have made. Think about it, There’s nothing more simpler and creative than a child’s mind and every child in the world has the same style of drawing. They, somehow, already use a universal language. Why not using it and put some rules into it ?

THERE’S I AND THE OTHERS

Before going any further, we need to work on the self. This nuance is not essential concerning the exposition of ideas and concepts but could be important for any other speeches. The fact that our experiences through life are unique makes us different from others. To differentiate «Mr everybody» from «I», we will need to put a specific sign on our human pattern: a line on the top of the head. Of course, nothing prevent us to invent different signs to characterize different persons. This sign will be an equivalence of a name. The fact of using the same sign twice in a speech will give to the reader a clue that these two characters are the same person.

Human

Someone I Someone in particular

Leibniz’s integration system

THE RELATION BETWEEN ELEMENTS

Now that we know how to represent things, we need to know how to connect them together, how to make sentence.

Human minds are based on actions may they be past, present, future or imaginary. Think about it, the mere thoughts we have are some things we did, should do, or will do. Languages allow us to translate thoughts into understandable sounds to members of a same community. By a simple logical inference, language allow us to translate actions. As for pure actions, we do them everyday, while talking, walking, writing, reading, sleeping etc. It leads us to the conclusion that every elements in our lives, may they be apart from each other and seems, at first sight, to have nothing in common are, in fact, connected by the notion of actions. Why not use this statement and integrate it to our study ?

Let’s keep the idea of a line, transform it into an arrow and use it as the representation of action. Connecting several elements in a directed way by arrows will allow the concept of schemes to rise.

Lines and curves as ABC’s, patterns as words and schemes as sentences.

In our lives, we can do two things : acting or you saying something about a past, present or future action. It will allow us to be more specific depending on where the arrow comes from. Body to body would suggest «all body actions» and head to head, where the voice comes from, could suggest «talking».

We live in a world where things are linked and related to each other. But thankfully relations are not always one-sided, they can be mutual like friendship or rivalry for example. To underline this mutual relation, we will use the double arrow. The more thick the arrow is the stronger the relation will be.

«I do something to someone» «I say something to someone»

EMOTIONS

We are, with no doubt, gifted of the power of emotion. Useful or not, it give us joy or pain, but it is what helps us making decisions (Damasio, 1994), it is what makes us human. Every action we make will, intentionally or not, procure a certain amount of emotions to another being. We will not revolutionize the world by saying that emotions are divided into two categories : good or bad. Let’s use them just to give the main idea of the emotional collateral that can have an action or a speech. How ? by using emoticons or the power to reproduce specific facial features linked to particular emotions: happiness, sadness, anger etc.

THE NOTION OF GROUP...The arrow object will be used to link elements. But these elements can be simple such as a single being or complex such as several people together or a person on a bike. So we

«I do something good to someone» «I say something bad to somebody»

He is my friend Rivalry

Mutual relation Strong mutual relation

need an item allowing us to group them and treat them as a unity. In our language, and inspired by mathematics, we will use brackets and use them to group different elements.

WE MAKE... We are creators. One of the goal of our lives is to make or create things may they be materials like objects or abstracts like concepts. The essence of an idea is the basic «spark» that will allow a being to create something innovative. The idea of a new restaurant, the idea of a new pedagogy, the idea of a new mechanical system etc. An idea, by definition, as only one purpose : create. Our language has as primer goal the expression of ideas so it must take this «make/creation» parameter into account.

If you think that the act of creation is to make something appear from thin air, then you believe in magic and we find it admirable. Usually, in our material world, we create things by combining elements together. Combine them differently than everyone else, and you’ll have something new. In our language, we combine lines and curved lines to create geometrical object. So we just need to underline it into a specific scheme. We just created the bracket item to group things together, so let’s use it and integrate it into the arrow item. For example, let’s create a key by grouping different stick and circles together and assemble them into the desired item.

A single person

A group of persons

A key has been made

But usually, things are man made. So we will be able to express this concept by adding the human item.

This system can be used to make more complex items such as bikes for example.

A technological device is very often designed by a group of people, the definition of a team. So we can combine different element to express this idea.

But we can combine more and more items to precise any ideas. As we used a specific signs to «name» someone, we will use the same cunning to identify a particular group. for example....

To make a bike

A group of people (a team) make a bike

My friend makes a key

TIME

The arrow item may have another advantage other than pointing out relations between elements. It can also imply the notion of time: one of the most important parameter of our lives. Times passes, we anticipate future actions and store past ones as experiences. Even in our sentences, we may choose to mention a (close or far) past, present or a (close or far) future actions. It’s important but not obligatory. We could be satisfied with only explaining simple relations by using the «general present», it’s not specific to the past neither to the future, it’s just a fact. This «general present» is translated by the use of our simple arrow. For a time specific relation, we will need another arrowed base time specific object.

2 distinct groups of people work together to make a bike

Simple relation Time relation

Signs characterizing a group

General present or not, we live in the present and every stories or ideas we may want to express, past or future will be in relation to our present situation :

«In 10 years, I will be someone different compared to what I am now and 10 years ago, I was someone different compared to what I am now.»

With this idea in mind, the present will always be the center of the speech, like the coordinates «0:0» on the cartesians axis. Past will be represented by an arrow toward the left of the page and future as an arrow toward the right. The longer the arrow is the longer the projection into the past or the future will be.

I will give an example of how we could make this language evolve. Let’s think about the notion of days. If we want to expose something that will happen in one days we will need to use one of the two marker we know of : the sun or the moon. The sun as a circle won’t be precise enough to activate the ISA wanted but the moon, as a curved shape, may be more specific.

PAST FUTURE

In a long timeIt was a long time ago

It was some time ago In some time

SoonNot so long ago

Tomorrow, I will do something to someone that will make him/her happy

For ideas and concepts representations, this time vector could also be used to express past and future steps of a conception process. Let’s re-take the bike example. We will expose three steps in the construction of a bike.

First step Second step Third step

In fact we could push little further and, by this time vector, express the notion of cause and effect.

THE APPROXIMATION PROBLEM

In our current languages we have several words to give an approximate quantity. Representing a small quantity can be easy, we can translate «few», «some», «a small amount of» by drawing one or two items. The problem is lightly different for big quantity. Drawing «many», «several», «a lot», «a tremendous amount of» can be very long or problematic to represent. We touch to the infinity or what we may name the «etc.» problem. But once again, we don’t really need to create something new, why not use what is already common to our pre-representation system ? The dotted lines are encrypted in our language system by the famous and ambiguous «...» but also in a pure pictographic representation. Ending a series of items by a last doted copy of it could mean «and so on and on» therefore implying the notion of «many».

Many people

Something happened to me in the past... ...which will have consequences for someone in the future

CAUSE EFFECT

AN EXAMPLE FOR LEARNING

Before going further we need to give a final concrete example of how we could represent an idea or concept. We choose to try to express the learning process.

Here is the interpretation :

At the end, it tells the idea of someone trying to make a key through time. After many trials and failure, he succeed into making this key. Trials-errors are the basic concept of every learning processes. He learned how to make a key.

A form associated with what seems to be a door

= a key

which open the door

Someone

Something will be made with these

elements

A form associated with what seems to be

a door

Result = Bad emotion from this association = FAILURE

Doted lines =

several times

These events are delayed in time

SUCCESS

A specific signs showing that it is always the same

door

Time related item

INTEGRATION.The last part before concluding will be the integration of this language at a higher level. We believe this language can be limited only by imagination and we cannot stop thinking of all the evolutions possible. A whole speech could have the following form. Here, we will use brackets as objects and connect them randomly.

As european natives, we have started our speech from the top left corner. An arabic native will probably start his speech at the top right corner, but what’s important is that the BEGINNING of the speech will be marked by the biggest object : similar to the use we have for caps. With this indication in mind, the speech could have began anywhere on the page.

LET’S GET CRAZY...You, reader, please, must consider this last paragraph as an ideas opened for discussions. What we are going to expose is just an example on how we could perfect this language or make it evolve.

As we look at the previous scheme, something else crosses our mind and we feel the need to push our ideas to another level. What if, in fact everything was time related ? What if «the general present» didn’t really existed. When we think about it... it’s just something that we did in a past (a meeting, an action, a speech, a choice etc.) for which the results is still visible in the present and probably will be in the future. So what if, in all our schema, only time specific arrow existed ? We will restart from our cause and effect schema made earlier.

The thicker the arrow is the stronger the relation will be, there we can easily imagine this kind of relation.

From this point, we can do a first parallel between our language and our neural system. Neurons are firing because they receive signals from neurons above them, may a time interval be as short as milliseconds. This is this synchronization or non-synchronization that make our cognitive system. Our cause and effect scheme. Also neurons are linked by more or less stronger connection : the more two neurons work together the more strong the connection will be. This statement is easily translated by our thick arrows. Let’s go further by dividing the double arrow into 2 distinct time arrow.

This double timed arrow is the representation of the feedback process.

But Does it really fit in our language ? For friendship for example. The problem we notice concerns the direction of the arrows and their meaning. To be honest, it doesn’t really mean something : one will do something to someone in the future and the other did something to him in the past. Doesn’t make any sense at all. But if you invert one object, something else appears : the future of one become the past of the other. We are in an atemporal loop which correspond to the definition of true friendship : someone who has been there in the past and will be in the future.

=

CAUSE EFFECT

It tells us about a new reading parameter for our «sentences» : orientation. Every element will be divided in two : what’s come from the left (a cause), go toward the left (what an element did in a past) and what’s going toward the right (future actions). Every element become the center with a specific past and specific directed future. So the figure number 1 could become :

the future of one become the past of the other

This is as far as we may go on this study. This level of writing and reading and this last schema generates many openings, questions and problem to resolve, many of them concerning time loops. Even with these question marks, it tells us a lot about the incredible power of adaptation that can have this language on many research fields : science, philosophy, geometry, cognition etc. We are already working on these adaptation which will be the center of further papers.

CONCLUSION

In this study we tried to settle foundations for a hypothetic universal written language. By understanding, we mean extract from a written symbol a concept or a specific representation. Trees, carrots, planes etc. All this words triggered pictures, sounds, tastes etc attached to these specific object. These objects are universal, not the words used to express them. To build a universal language we needed to get rid of the words. We decided, as many others thought before us, to replace them by pictograms.

With this idea in mind, we used, as alphabet, lines and curved lines. Combining them together allowed us to create geometric forms leading to patterns that would be used as words. But words have precise meanings only when they are linked with others, the role of a sentence. We used an arrowed system to connect these different elements together and create schemes as sentences.

A language, as universal it aspire to be, need some common writing rules : the grammar. Still based on our simple alphabet, we decided to create a code to translate different basic elements of the human mind : actions, relations, time (past, present, future), grouping, approximation, creation, the «I» and the specificity (of an object or a people). At the end, we just added some rules to rebus and the way childs draw...

As for the results themselves. We succeed into creating a language that may be accessible to everyone. We have enough rules for everyone to be on the same «foot» but few enough to let people create their own style of writing: simple, cartooning, realistic complex. (especially if you have time and good with a pen). This last statement lead us to one of the most interesting point of this study : the unlimited capacity of evolution and a powerful tool adaptable to many fields.

I really believe that this system could be use as a pedagogic or ludic tool but using it in everyday life or for communication ? I’m afraid it won’t do the job. It will ask people time they probably don’t have. It would still be subject to interpretations and to precise them we will need to complicate the schemes. We don’t mention the big sheets of papers that

it will need. Apart from this flaws, it is still inspired by the human cognition : simplicity leading to complexity.

But before giving up and use the white flag, we identify a last point that could be some use: this language oblige us to think before writing. To write in this system, we need to dissect every words, thoughts and concept we want to expose. It helps us articulate our thoughts together. It force us to synthesize an idea or a concept to his most simple and abstract form so it can be adaptable to every situation...

...and this may be exactly what we need in everyday life and research field...

REFERENCES

Damasio AR, Blanc F. 1994. L’erreur de Descartes. Edition Odile Jacob.

Dechambenoit G, 2012. Et si tout était aussi simple ?. 100 pages. Ibookstore.Lien téléchargement