{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021241493091359042, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005980614559703032, 'mean_word_length': 5.423841059602649, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
M. M. Slaughter, Universal languages and scientific taxonomy in the seventeenth century . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Pp. x+277.

Since the significance of philosophical and universal languages to the scientific revolution of seventeenth-century England has drawn considerable attention (e.g. Cohen, 1977; Knowlson, 1975; Salmon 1979 and Shapiro, 1969), one may reasonably question the need of another book on the subject. Mary M. Slaughter justifies her Universal languages and scientific taxonomy in the seventeenth century on the grounds that it is the first study to trace the scientific origins of universal language theory to Aristotle and to place these artificial languages in the centre of the seventeenth-century scientific movement. Slaughter's thesis is that the universal language projectors in their attempt to create taxonomic nomenclatures were motivated by Aristotelian essentialism, a philosophy which relied on order and classification. She argues that certain sociocultural factors were responsible for making the universal language movement an English phenomenon: the explosion of information, the specialization of science, and the emergence of a literate culture. Slaughter divides her book into three parts: the first deals with the Aristotelian tradition and the rise of scientific taxonomy; the second with the development of universal languages in England; and the third with the collapse of scientific taxonomy and universal languages. In Chapter 1, Slaughter establishes that the hierarchal world view prevalent in seventeenth-century science was derived from Aristotle's notions of accident and substance. These were later expanded by Porphyry to include genus, species, difference and property. This universal scheme of classification with its many categories and subcategories presumed that the order of nature was not only capable of being known but of being represented. Consequently, taxonomy provided seventeenth-century science with its methodology as well as with its end: the definition and classification of reality. Slaughter is convinced that this Aristotelian theory of taxonomy dominated the first generation of seventeenth-century English scientists; and that nominalists, like Thomas Hobbes, never had the support necessary to influence the scientific community. Preceded by the popular Great Chain of Being, taxonomy offered a systematic representation of the order of nature. In Chapter 2, Slaughter asserts that decontextualization, the separation of the object from its living context, led to the rise of seventeeth-century science. Tracing the history of botany from Theoprastus and Albertus Magnus through Caspar Bauhun, Andrea Cesalpino, and Joachim Jung to John Ray, Slaughter argues that the botanists proved the applicability of taxonomy. Because a plant with its inherent qualities could be studied without its being physically present, decontextualization promoted logical, rational and scientific activity. Similarly, language was studied apart from its living context, as the works of the early English linguists such as William Holder, Robert Robinson and John Wallis will attest. Slaughter concludes that the seventeenth-century English linguists were more than familiar with the science movement they were an essential part of its growth and development. The new scientists believed that in order to express their abstractions regarding the order of nature, they needed an artificial language which would be free of synonyms, incapable of polysemy, and void of lexical gaps. In short, they sought to invent a universal language based upon a taxonomic model. In Chapter 3, which ends the first part of the work, Slaughter demonstrates that the fusion of a theory of language with one of nature was inevitable. In Chapter 4, Slaughter refers to the inspiration of Bacon and Descartes; the taxonomic approaches of Gerhard Vossius, Juan Caramuel, and Tommaso Campanella; the method of George Dalgarno; and the refinement of John Wilkins. Viewing Jan Comenius as a transitional scholar standing between the ideal of philosophical grammar and the construction of a manageable universal language, Slaughter elaborates on Comenius' method, which consisted of full nomenclature (a word for each taxonomic item), exact terminology (full agreement on the meaning of the words), and a set of laws (dependable rules of syntax). Here the first rule of universal languages clearly emerges every element of nature must be defined and classified before it can be assigned a lexical item. The fact that this could never be realized would lead to the demise of universal languages and eventually would change the direction of the science movement from definition and classification to prediction. Chapters 6 and 7 are devoted to the development of philosophical languages in England which