Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.2.
Ars Magna
by Ramon Llull. Source: [192]
His plan was founded in theoretical philosophy, or rather theosophy, as the
primary motive for Ramon's method was that theology was identical with phi-
losophy. He claimed that there was no difference between philosophy and theol-
ogy, reason and faith, so that the highest secrets could be proven using logic and
his machine - the
Ars Magna
. The best known edition of the work in which
Ramon Llull described his logical machine was the Strasbourg edition of 1651.
Ars Magna
has also been the subject of contemporary work, and one of the
most often cited versions is an attempt at the automatic implementation of Llull's
solutions made by Steven Abbott and Yanis Dambergs of 2003 (Fig. 1.3).
Llull's system originally inspired Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to propose his
idea of
Characteristica Universalis
[64], presenting very simple sentences using
numbers and at the same time building sentences resulting from its operation.
Expressions like “All
A
s are
B
” were checked by holding the number assigned
to the concept
A
and checking whether that number was divisible by the number
assigned to the concept represented by the letter
B
. If the noun 'flower' was repre-
sented by number 12, and the adjective 'creeping' by the number 23, their smallest
common multiple was treated as a common conceptual category. In the example
problem, the result - the number 276 - represented a 'creeping flower'. If 'grape-
vine' was represented by the number 11,316, then the sentence 'All grapevines are
creeping' was true, as the number 11,316 is divisible by 276. Today, looking back,
Leibniz can be said to have proposed a universal dictionary capable of converting
words, sentences or syllogisms into numbers which could be the subject of reason-
ing based on the rules of arithmetic. To simplify the calculations necessary for his
method, Leibniz also proposed the first computing machine capable of multiplying
and dividing.
