Possibility for an a-priori constructed philosophical mathematical language

[qoltedy]

I very much like the idea of a philosophical conlang, and don’t think such a concept is anachronistic at all. How familiar are you with Rev. Ramón Llull and his Ars series (1274~1308)? This body of work is the next big [possibly] Voynich-related rabbit hole I plan to dive down. Llull claimed that the algorithm he invented, expressed largely in flowcharts and volvelles (!), could be used to guide someone toward the answer to really any question about life and the larger world. That’s a pretty eyebrow-raising claim — any work of art or scholarship that claims to be about everything is typically not about much of anything. I’m intrigued though, and willing to give it a chance.

Father Llull’s main use of his invention was convincing Muslims that they should convert to Christianity. He almost lost his life to an angry mob, trying this at a piazza in Tunis. So I can see why Father Llull is regarded by some today as a bit … touched, and his magnum opus of questionable philosophical merit. Llull’s Ars series is nevertheless very valuable historically, to people interested in the history of divination techniques and their cultural diffusion from the Arab world. Just like alchemy yielded what we know today as chemistry, I imagine a historical line can be drawn between popular book- and volvelle-based divination systems, and the design of computational and logical problem solving algorithms as we know them today.

Father Llull died in 1316. By that time he had traveled extensively, and founded academic departments (mostly for Semitic languages — he was a very talented linguist) at a number of renowned universities across Europe. He was well-heeled and well connected, and doubtless had a deep impact on a number of contemporaries. It’s not at all inconceivable to me that a student or protégée of Llull’s could have thought to continue his legacy by condensing his Ars into a philosophical conlang, with each glyph symbolically representing a specific movement or state of the algorithm, and each word's (or each line’s) sequence of glyphs representing a specific path through the algorithm. If Llull’s Ars really could be used like a library book classification system to describe, classify, and map all important aspects of the human experience, I can’t see why it couldn’t form the basis of an a priori constructed philosophical language or notation system. Probably a surprisingly productive and versatile one too, in terms of the range of meanings expressable and encodable. That said, such a conlang would likely suffer the same problem as most a prior philosophical conlangs: steep learning curves, unwieldy phonology, and unnatural syntax, and therefore kind of too impractical for most people to use. (Anyone here ever try to learn Lojban?)

As I make my way through Llull’s Ars, I’m going to keep in mind all that I’ve read and discussed about the properties and structure of Voynichese, and see if something clicks in my mind. I’ll probably also be rereading Patrick Feaster’s experiments with designing a cipher that fits Voynichese as we have it, and David Jackson and Brian Cham’s exploration of volvelles.

That is quite interesting. I haven't researched this conlang so that will be interesting to learn about. 

I think your point about the steep learning curves of traditional conlangs is really interesting, and this is something I've thought about in relation to the VMS.

In many examples of conlang construction, even the originators of the languages themselves hardly are fluent in the language, for the reasons you highlighted. Clunky, unintuitive rules, unwieldy phonology, steep learning curves, etc.

If we are to take seriously the hypothesis that the VMS is a writing in a conlang, the sheer fluidity, depth and breadth of writing in one's own conlang is already anomalous. It could tell us something about the nature of the VMS conlang, that if it is a conlang, that conlang would have to be easy enough to learn and speak, and really think in, that someone could write hundreds of pages in it, or even so easy to learn that an entire group of people learned it if we are to take the idea seriously of multiple scribes.

In that case, it may rule out certain classes of philosophical conlangs which have exceedingly hard to memorize and complex rules. For example, the VMS likely doesn't have the same philosophical structure as say, Ithkuil, which is a conlang that's notoriously nearly impossible for anyone to learn to use practically.

I think this supports the idea that if the VMS is a conlang, it's likely remarkably simple to learn, and fairly straightforward in its structure, as unintuitive as that may seem on the surface.