The Alphabetisation of Thought

Orthography, Locke, and Natural Philosophy

Series: 

The Alphabetisation of Thought is a bold and original study about the rise, spread and dominance of orthographic thinking in the early modern period. Starting out as a local, grammatical mode of thinking, it soon gained momentum, strength and depth, turning into a development that provoked a wholesale reorganisation of thought along the lines of alphabetical writing. The study brings together an unprecedented range of texts from areas as diverse as grammar, epistemology, classical scholarship, natural philosophy and cryptography. A major source of evidence is Locke’s doctrine of ideas as laid out in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Echoing the orthographic debate of the preceding 150 years, it affords not only crucial insight into the final stages of the alphabetisation process, but also glimpses of its legacy.
Copyright Year:
2025
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-68485-0
Publication:
10 Mar 2025
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-68484-3
Publication:
21 Mar 2025
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Michael M. Isermann is Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg. He has published mainly in the history of linguistics and intellectual history.
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Text
List of Figures and Illustrations

Introduction: Anachronisms, Pre-concepts and the Alphabetisation of Thought

Part 1: Locke and the Alphabetisation of Thought


1 Writing and the Mind
 1 The Rise and Fall of Writing
 2 Writing, Printing and the Mind
 3 The Printing Office and the Mind’s Faculties
 4 The Compositor and the Spelling Tradition

2 Orthography and the Mind
 1 The Alphabet and the Mind
 2 Simple Ideas and the littera
 3 Orthoepy and Orthography: a Humanist Prelude
 4 Mulcaster and Locke on Common Use
 5 Hart, Locke and Spelling Vices

3 The Alphabetisation of Thought
 1 Approaching the Alphabetisation of Thought
 2 Orthographic Vices and the Alphabetisation of Thought
 3 The Stages of Alphabetisation
 4 Alphabetisation and the Categories of Change

4 Alphabetisation and the Tradition
 1 Locke and Ideas as Signs
 2 Writing and the Truth of Ideas
 3 Alphabetical Order and Essentialism
 4 The Standardisation of Writing

Part 2: Practical Routines and Theoretical Framework


5 Thinking, Spelling and Ciphering
 1 Marigolds and Violets
 2 Simple Ideas and Simple Secrets
 3 Cryptography and Orthography
 4 Ciphering and the Teaching of Pronunciation
 Excursus: the Alphabetisation of Thought and Linguistic Practices

6 Extending the Spelling Reform
 1 From Rational Spelling to a Universal Alphabet
 2 Universal Characters and Philosophical Languages
 3 The Cipher Model of Communication
 4 Wilkins’s Phonetic Character and the Communication of Sounds

7 Representation and Analogy
 1 Robert Boyle and the Encrypted Nature
 2 Analogy and Alphabetisation
 3 Contextualizing the Alphabetisation of Thought
Bibliography
Index
Written in an accessible language, the study addresses scholars and advanced students interested in the Early Modern period, more specifically, historians of ideas, of philosophy, of science and of linguistics.
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Publisher:
Brill
Language:
English
Pages:
xii, 404 pp.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004684850

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