The Dictionary As Philosophy: Reconstructing The Meaning of Our Father

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The Dictionary as Philosophy: Reconstructing the Meaning of Our Father
Fredric F.M. Dolezal
0. Introduction
"You must decide whether you will write a history or a linguistic analysis"—so said Henry
Kahane during the oral component of my preliminary examination. Braj Kachru and Ladislav
Zgusta agreed. Now, as then, I continue to seek a method that will allow me to discuss
coherently a three-hundred-and-some-year-old text that itself does not heed the advice of the late
Professor Kahane. The text, An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language
(Wilkins, 1668), does fall within the discipline of "humanistic linguistics," a discipline named by
Kahane that I believe aptly describes many of the pedagogical concerns and methods of Ladislav
Zgusta. Let it be known that neither Kachru, Kahane nor Zgusta are culprits in the path that I
follow in this essay. This article raises questions concerning the nature of definition and its
relation to meaning; but it also must address the nature of a lexicon, specialized dictionaries and
the representation and transmission of knowledge. Within the confines of a brief essay it is not
possible to follow every intellectual lead; therefore, I concentrate on defining the problems posed
by the questions and presenting a solution offered by the scientific community in seventeenth-
century England.
Copyright © 2013. De Gruyter, Inc.. All rights reserved.
1. Philosophical Language and its Dictionary
That a dictionary of philosophy should be something quite different than a philosophical

dictionary tells us about the specialization of our intellectual life which, in turn, indicates a
fragmented and compartmentalized approach to knowledge: in a dictionary of philosophy we
expect to find special terms defined according to an encyclopedic method, as if the only matters
upon which philosophers argue would be the jargon created especially for philosophical
discourse. A specialized dictionary organized according to this principle determines the limits of
philosophical discourse; that is, a dictionary of only specialized terms seems to deauthorize
ordinary language as proper to philosophy. A dictionary of scientific terms follows the same
method: is science a specialized vocabulary that finds expression within the grammar of a given
natural language? Perhaps philosophy and science only meet in a discipline called the philosophy
Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary : Studies in Honor of Ladislav Zgusta, edited by Braj B. Kachru, and Henry + Kahane, De Gruyter, Inc.,
2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ugalib/detail.action?docID=3043780.
Created from ugalib on 2018-10-17 13:46:19.
342 Fredric F.M. Dolezal
of science. The production of scientific dictionaries 1 (as opposed to dictionaries of science)

reveals a predilection for science over philosophy, which further affirms our ability to divide the
two; as a consequence of the modernist trend towards minute compartmentalization, the new
philosophy of the seventeenth century faded into mere science.
The work under consideration here, An essay towards a real character and a philosophical
language (1668), largely comprises a "Scientifical part, containing a regular enumeration and
description of such things and notions, as are to be known, and to which names are to be
assigned, which may be stiled Universal Philosophy..." (Wilkins, 1668: 297) This project was
ordered by the Royal Society to provide a means of universal communication that would be free
from the "defects" of all existing languages. Not surprisingly, in the culture of science in
seventeenth-century England, philosophical discourse and scientific discourse exist within the
same linguistic register; however, a truly philosophical discourse includes the possibility for
"facilitating mutual Commerce... spreading the knowledge of Religion... and unmasking wild
errors [of Religion], that shelter themselves under the disguise of affected phrases ..." (Wilkins,
1668, The Epistle Dedicatory). In the same way that universal laws can be formulated to account
for the natural world, it is possible to construct a universal language based on an understanding
of those universal laws and the "things and notions" that are represented by them. From this
perspective the universal, the philosophical and the scientific are synonymous: Wilkins says,
"As men do generally agree in the same Principle of Reason, so do they likewise agree in the
same Internal Notion or Apprehension of things" ·, the principle of reason, as presented here by
Wilkins, provides the intellectual foundation for the synonymy of the three terms. Reason also
allows an active connection between the domain of science and the domain of religion;2 thus, a
philosophical language can "unfold" religious argumentation.
The philosophical language consists of a grammar, an oral and written sign system, and a
"philosophical table" which we would call in our terms a lexicon, or a dictionary organized upon
scientific principles. The Table is both a philosophical dictionary and a dictionary of philosophy.
In other places I have pointed out the congruence of the Essay with a variety of semantic theories
in the twentieth century; this is not the place to review those arguments; 3 it should be sufficient
1
Some may not be willing to call dictionaries organized on principles of linguistic analysis scientific; however, it
is common for contemporary lexicographers to validate their work by invoking linguistics as science. Of course,
this does not prevent squabbles over the extent to which a dictionary succeeds in being scientific: one person's
descriptivism is another's prescriptivism, to name just one possible point of debate.
2 The tradition of Anglicanism, especially as represented by John Jewell (see Southgate, 1962) and Richard
Hooker (see Booty, 1979), gives the use of human reason an authoritative position in questions of textual
interpretation.
3 I have drawn comparisons with principles of Saussurean structuralism, lexical semantics as practiced by Nida
(1975), Apresyan, Mel'ïuk, 2olkovski (1969) among others. Particularly interesting is Wilkins' use of so-called
Transcendental Particles which perform in a fashion similar to the Lexical Functions of Apresyan, 2olkovski and
Mel'Suk. See also Anna Wierzbicka's essay, "In search of tradition: The semantic ideas of Leibniz" in Dolezal
(1992:10-25).
The Dictionary as Philosophy: Reconstructing the Meaning of Our Father. 343
to note here that philosophical discourse for Wilkins includes ordinary language, indeed,
ordinary language forms the knowledge base for discourse. Notwithstanding the usefulness of
the philosophical language, the Tables certainly represent the state of scientific knowledge of the
period. I would argue that the dictionary is philosophical because it succeeds as a descriptive
lexicon rather than as a prescriptive manual. Even so, some of the guardians of the history of
English lexicography still seem determined to refuse admission of Wilkins and Lloyd's
conceptually and alphabetically ordered definitions into the pantheon of English dictionaries, 4
and therefore do not recognize the contribution of the Essay to the practice of lexicography in
England. However, the nature of a philosophical (or scientific) lexicon demands attention as an
important problem for consideration. First, I will consider the problem from a more general
perspective of textual analysis and then consider the problem from the specific perspective of
constructing a specialized lexicon; I will conclude with a discussion of the philosophical lexicon
as English dictionary.
Textual scholars of our age argue whether one can know the intentions of an author to the
extent that there exists a gradient of authorial intentionality that moves from the positivist
Author's Final Intention to the idealist Illusion of Intention. In the history of ideas, however,
there appears to be a general trend of deducing intention from influences and what the author
tells us he or she wishes to accomplish (I will leave aside the question of author-ship, but
certainly my wavering between referring to Wilkins and Wilkins-Lloyd suggests a problem of
author-ity). The Essay has been labeled "essentialist taxonomy" and "logocentric". The term
logocentric in this case reduces the lexical-conceptual classification to a dirty word and really
does not merit attention; however, the charge of "essentialist taxonomy", especially as it appears
in Slaughter (1982), deserves an answer. Because of the scope of this paper I must be brief, even
though the issue warrants a fuller exposition.
Slaughter (1982: 5-6) makes this general assertion about the Aristotelian underpinnings of
pre-Newtonian science (in spite of the reaction against Aristotelianism in the new philosophy):
For the non-mechanists... the belief in Aristotelian essences persisted through the seventeenth century.
When they ask what differentiates a plant from an animal, a tree from a shrub, a cucumber from a
marigold, they are asking what is the essence or nature of these things such that it is similar to or different
from the essence of those other things. (A linguist like Lodowyck is doing the same thing when he puts
moisture, to besprinkle, to baptize, to wet into the same semantic paradigm.) The notions of genus and
species, which in the seventeenth century belonged to ordinary language as much as to natural history,
are predicated on the existence of essences. Any utterance or description of nature that invokes these
concepts!...] implies that what is under consideration is the nature or essence of the thing at hand. It
implies that there are essences.
To be sure, Slaughter concentrates her attention on the charts of plants and animals, and as a
result provides an interesting insight into the methods of natural history in conjunction with the
4
Professors Noel Osselton and Gabriele Stein appear thoroughly unmoveable in their reluctance to recognize the
dictionariness of Wilkins' and Lloyd's Essay; see Dolezal 1983, 1985 for a different appraisal.
344 Fredric FM. Dolezal
new philosophy. She does note that "Wilkins was concerned to point out that determining or
knowing the essence was an empirical rather than an a priori matter." (Slaughter, 1982: 162)
Indeed, we know that the language system he developed took priority over the taxonomic tables
supplied to him by the foremost botanist of the time, John Ray. 5
To bring the discussion back around to the topic of lexicography and linguistic description, I
would point out Slaughter's comment on Lodowyck in the citation given above that ascribes the
search for essences to the organization of a "semantic paradigm." It is here that a question of the
intentions of the author might well be asked: My approach has been to analyze the text as it
presents itself to our reading; that is, to decide what is in the text rather than where it might have
come from. If we find a "semantic paradigm," then it must offer itself to linguistic analysis.
Perhaps all dictionaries and thesauruses are essentialist taxonomies, and perhaps criterial features
are nothing more than Aristotelian essences hiding under a new term. Furthermore, Slaughter
tells us that genus and species are as much a part of the ordinary language as of a specialized
language of the period; if that is true, we run the risk of making too much of these ordinary
language metaphors, unless they can rigorously be defined as metaphors of science.
The following comment from Clauss (1982: 552) on the reductive labeling propensities of
Michel Foucault's analysis of Wilkins, et al., is relevant to the discussion of how difficult it is for
us in the twentieth century to categorize the ideas of the seventeenth century:
In this omnivorous work [the .Essay], philosophy and taxonomy, theory of knowledge and natural
science, together wrestle against the limits of language, forcibly demonstrating that the experience of
language for the seventeenth century was anything but a solid and tightly knit unity. A plethora of
blueprints for universal languages, real character alphabets, and philosophical grammars testify to a
pervasive suspicion that resemblance never really did enter into the propositional relation and that
consequently, the hardest task for all men since Adam has been to ascribe the proper names to things
"and in that name to name their being."
Clauss might have added religion and theology into the wrestling match within the "omnivorous
work." No doubt Wilkins believed that the form and essence of a being differentiated that being
from all other beings; 6 however, the linguistically motivated method he instituted in his language
system to represent the differentiation is of more interest to me than naming the system
"essentialist." If we wanted to put Wilkins into a chain of influence, it might be more felicitous
to introduce Aquinas into the great chain since that provides us the link of the Aristotelian world
to the Christian world.
Whether Bishop Wilkins successfully reflects the state of scientific knowledge in his system
merits study. The artifact he left us has textual and rhetorical characteristics that should help us
5 Wilkins did not follow the taxonomic tables of Ray to the letter; rather, he modified them according to the
structure of the Philosophical Tables, a consequence of what Wilkins calls the "streightness of that method which I
am bound up to by these Tables" (1668, p. 24).
6 Wilkins in his "Scheme of Moral Principles" lists definition 1: "That which doth constitute any thing in its
being, and distinguish it from all other things, is called the Form or Essence of such a thing" (Wilkins, 1675, p. 17).
He is speaking of animate beings here, so it is debatable how this applies to all concepts which fall under discourse.
think about the project of definition, especially as it touches upon representation and
transmission of knowledge. The relative absence of discursive text within the volume places the
artifact within a tradition of lexicography rather than, say, philosophy: there are 307 pages of
tables (philosophical and grammatical) out of 469 pages of discursive matter (prefatory text
included), plus another 157 pages of alphabetically ordered dictionary entries. The Essay relies
upon non-discursive modes of print communication. I suggest that the model is the message, the
method is the theory. The structure of the whole and its parts becomes a metaphor for the
knowable world. Frawley (1982: 147) articulates a procedure for measuring the effectiveness
and validity of scientific lexicons; I will allow these suggestive comments to show a possible
line of inquiry into Wilkins, since this essay must proceed along the central theme and leave this
question for another day.
In constructing a definition of a scientific term, the lexicographer is representing the state of knowledge
in a particular discipline. In constructing a metaphorical definition of a scientific term, the lexicographer
is making explicit claims about the theories, models, and cognitive perspectives which rule the semantics
of the discipline which he is trying to codify [...] the lexicographer is committed to claiming that he
knows the state of the art of the discipline in which he is working [...] It is therefore incumbent upon him
to know the logic of definition in science so that he may render a clear and responsible picture of the talk
which constitutes the discipline.
Whatever we may think of the premises and realization of Wilkins' work, the scope and method
of the tables and the dictionary do make "explicit claims about the theories, models, and
cognitive perspectives which rule the semantics of the discipline which he is trying to codify."
The structure of the tables and dictionary contains the narrative: we can read the narrative and
open it to the same sort of analytical criticism we would apply to any other traditionally ordered
print artifact. 7
2. Wilkins' Dictionary, Tables, and the Lord's Prayer
It is in the spirit of reading Wilkins and Lloyd that I look into the relationship between the
alphabetical dictionary, the philosophical tables and use of the Lord's Prayer. People generally
use dictionaries to support the reading of a text; the dictionary appended to the Essay functions
as an index to the tables. However, Wilkins claims a broader status for the dictionary that
William Lloyd prepared for him:
7
See Dolezal (forthcoming) for a preliminary discussion of the narrative that underlies onomasiological
classification systems; also see Wiegand (1990) and Dolezal (1989) for essays on the dictionary as a text. At this
point, "non-narrative" texts are not normally considered within critical and literary theories, not to mention the
general lack of textual analysis (rather than stylistics or discourse/text analysis) within the whole discipline of
linguistics.
346 Fredric F.M. Dolezal
[...]this Nation could not have afforded a fitter Person [Lloyd][,..]both in Philological, and Philosophical
matters[...]I must wholy ascribe to him that tedious and difficult task, of suting the Tables to the
Dictionary, and the drawing up of the Dictionary it self, which upon tryal, I doubt not, will be found to be
the most perfect, that was ever yet made for the English tongue. (1668, To the Reader)
A dictionary may support the reading of a text but it does not interpret the text or decide
between readings of a text. If the Wilkins-Lloyd dictionary definitions ideologically prescribe
meaning and thereby limit a reader, then the dictionary cannot be called a dictionary of the
English tongue. Of course, the tables have to be considered as integral in the course of searching
defínitions in the dictionary: many of the notations, and indeed the substance of the definitions
themselves, refer directly to corresponding concepts and lexical items within the tables. It may
seem contradictory to claim that this work explicitly states the theories and models of a
prevailing semantics and also defines the vocabulary of the English tongue. My task is to show,
through analyzing the method Wilkins employs when using the dictionary and tables to read a
text, how the elements of a dictionary cannot be mechanically inserted into a particular text: in
other words, context 8 determines the application of the linguistic material of the Essay.
Moreover, the acutely organized lexical base that is the material for the dictionary allows the user
to generate meanings not specifically given a formal position within the tables. The rules for
generating meaning are found in the grammatical section of the Essay. I will introduce and
explain the various components of the language system as it becomes necessary within the
confines of analyzing the Wilkins explication of the Lord's Prayer9. In short, Wilkins, by way of
giving an illustration on how to use his philosophical language, constructs a philosophical, and
thus scientific, analysis of this most common of prayers in the Christian liturgy.
The first two words of the prayer, Our Father, would appear simple enough to define: a
possessive pronoun followed by a frequently used noun; the capitalization offather marks it as a
special usage. Of course, this mark is peculiar to written language. The spoken prayer does not
indicate a special use of the word. Dictionaries do ordinarily depend upon the written record, so
we expect the marked form to be recorded. In the Alphabetical Dictionary that forms a part of
the Essay all the entries are capitalized. Following is the entry for Father.
Father.
Parent. RO.I.2. (male.]
monk RE.n.7.
ly, [adj. Father]
less. [Un-fathered.]
in law, [Father by Affinity.]
fore [Progenitor.] RO. 1.1.
° Clauss' use of omnivorous to describe the Essay is apt: it is difficult to discuss any one aspect of the Essay
without opening up a multitude of complex issues that are not really side issues; what context means here includes
not only the linguistic material, on the levels of morphology to discourse (which is important), but also the
theological, historical, textual, and philosophical foundations.
9 I will address the explication as exegesis within the Anglican tradition in another paper: "Scripture, tradition,
and the authority of the new philosophy: Bishop Wilkins and the Parenthood of God."
Foster R0.III.2.
God RO.m.l.
God the G.I.
Non-italicized words within an entry designate the various senses of the entry; the italicized
words indicate multi-word lexical units or affixes; in this case: fatherly; fatherless; father in
law; forefather; foster father; Godfather; and God the Father. Simple definitions are given
within the square brackets; the abbreviations and numerals indicate a specific position within the
tables. Obviously, one cannot use the dictionary without reference to the philosophical tables.
The title page of the dictionary explains the nature of the text: "An ALPHABETICAL
DICTIONARY Wherein all ENGLISH WORDS According to their VARIOUS
SIGNIFICATIONS, are either referred to their Places in the PHILOSOPHICAL TABLES, or
explained by such words as are in those TABLES." RE. stands for Ecclesiastical Relation, RO.
for Oeconomical Relation·, the numerals designate subdivisions within the generic category.
Therefore "Parent. RO.I.2 (male]" tells us the position in the tables, wherein the concept is
defined by its placement; father is not a radical, or integral, concept and thus needs to be
generated by the semantic operator (called a "transcendental particle") male. Under RO.I.2. we
find:
That respect wherein one man may stand to another, according to the first and most natural kind of
association of men into Families, is styled OECONOMICAL RELATION, Family, Household, domestic,
menial, House, Home.
1. Those who partake of the same Bloud, are styled Relations of CONSANGUINITY, Kin, kindred,
Bloud, House, Stem, Stock. [...]
[...] Direct [...] ascending [...]

2. PARENT, Sire,Father, Mother, Dam, paternal, maternal, Grandsire [...]
The notational system within the dictionary is mostly consistent, so that upon learning the basic
features one knows to read the definition for Father, "male parent." Accordingly, the cross-
referencing system allows a reader to find an expanded explication of the term as well as lexical
and semantic associates of the term (Parent and Child are both listed in position 2—child is
'direct descending': Issue, Son, Daughter, Brood, Litter, ....
The marked Father appears in the dictionary as God the Father, even though the dictionary
does not explicitly distinguish the two orthographic occurrences. The cross-reference sends us to
this explication in the tables:
That which the Heathen Philosophers stile the first Mover, the first and supreme cause of all things,
and suppose to be a Being of all possible perfections, is GOD, Lord, Jehovah, Deity, Divine-ity, Deifie.
And because of that absolute Simplicity and Purity of the Divine nature, whereby 'tis distinguished
form all other things, and therefore incapable of being divided by Parts or by Differences and Species as
the rest are; hereupon, under this Head there is onely provision to be made for that great Mystery of
Christianity, the Sacred Persons of the Blessed /Trinity/ /Father/ /Son/ /Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit/.
(Wilkins, 1668: 51)
348 Fredric F. M. Dolezal
Interestingly, God makes its entrance after four major categories have already been enumerated;
the generic category before GOD is DISCOURSE. The category is brief, orthodox, and in
relation to the pattern of the other Tables, anomalous. The "Heathen Philosophers," on the other
hand, are allowed to put forth the basic definition. Perhaps here there is more than a hint of a
gesture towards natural religion.
Before moving to the reading of the Lord's Prayer, it will be useful to compare the entry in
Wilkins-Lloyd to another entry for father; I have selected the Oxford English Dictionary for this
purpose (abbreviated to conserve space).
Father ...
1. One by whom a child is or has been begotten, a male parent, the nearest male ancestor. Rarely applied
to animals[...]
b. fig. [..·]
c. (More explicitly spiritual father. )[...]
d. Proverbs[...]
e. Colloquially extended to include a father-in-law, stepfather, or one who adopts another as his child
(morefully adoptivefather)[...]
2. A male ancestor more remote than a parent, esp. the founder of a race or family, a forefather,
progenitor!...]
3. One who institutesf...]
4. One who exercises protecting care like that of a father; one who shows paternal kindness[...]
5. a. Applied to God, expressing His relation to Jesus, to mankind in general[...], or to Christians (as His
children by regeneration or adoption). Also applied to heathen gods[...]
c. Theol. (God) the Father : the First Person of the Trinity[...]
The obvious congruencies between the two entries (not including the tables) include the terms
male parent; father-in-law; forefather; progenitor; God the Father. Related, but not so
immediately, are spiritual father/monk; adoptive father/ foster father. Including the tables for
comparison, then these terms are added to the list: paternal; heathen; child; Trinity; God; and
family. The OED does not distinguish between the unmarked and marked (capitalized) written
forms. I offer this brief, but suggestive, comparison, to help support my general argument for
accepting Wilkins-Lloyd as a dictionary of English, albeit a dictionary that is claimed to be
constructed according to philosophical principles. Within the tradition of English lexicography,

the Alphabetical Dictionary is the first monolingual dictionary that includes a broad range of
English vocabulary items, rather than a select list of so-called hard words (this honor usually is
given to J.K.'s A New English Dictionary, 1702—a dictionary that is totally inferior to the AD by
any standard of measurement). The comparison also shows that Wilkins-Lloyd adequately
describe father, even if their method does derive from Aristotle, essentialism or any other archaic
ideology.
I turn now to the "Particular Explication" and "Verbal Interpretation" of the Lord's Prayer
(Wilkins, 1668): the point where natural language and philosophical, or scientific, language
must be mediated. Following is the "Verbal Interpretation" of the philosophical reading of the
prayer:
Our Parent Who Art In Heaven Thy Name May it be Hallowed Thy Regnation May it be Coming Thy
Will May it be Done So In Earth As In Heaven Maist thou be Giving To Us In This Day Our Bread
Expedient And Maist thou be Forgiving To Us Our Trespasses As we Are Forgiving To Them Who Have
been Transgressing Against Us And Not Maist thou be Leading Us Into Temptation But Maist Thou be
Delivering Us From Evil For the Regnation, or tò regnare, And The Power And The Glory Is Thine
Everly Amen So May it be
There are many points of interest within this analytical reading of the prayer, but an
examination of Our Parent will illustrate the relationship between dictionary entry and
philosophical interpretation. The philosophical language, including the tables and the grammar,
provides a formal semantic base for a philosophical interpretation. A verbal interpretation (to
use Wilkins' term) explains the language that appears in the real character (each character
corresponds to a particular place in the tables, for example PARENT—RO.I.2). In English,
Father may be used to designate God (the Alphabetical Dictionary indicates this), but the
philosophical language places Father within a category that specifies human nature ("being
originally a noun of Person," as Wilkins says; cf. the OED: "Rarely applied to animals"). A
dictionary treats the Wilkinsian philosophical interpretation as a special application of the item:
for example, the OED introduces the sense of Father as 'God' in this way: "Applied to
God[...]"; as we have seen, the Wilkins-Lloyd dictionary shows the English usage, though the
dictionary does not have a metalexicographical term, Applied to . The concept applied to
underlies the act of interpreting a text: the philosophical and scientific interpretation of Our
Father must take the context in which it occurs into consideration.
The concept father does not occur as a Radical (elementary semantic unit, loosely speaking);
as we have seen, it is generated through the use of a semantic operator ("transcendental
particle"), male, plus the Radical, Parent. Yet we do not find "Our male Parent" in the verbal
interpretation. According to Wilkins, "male parent" represents the "strictest sense" of father :
"the word Father in the most Philosophical and proper sense of it, denoting a Male Parent." The
usage in the context of this common prayer is metaphorical; the "Particular Explication" of
parent.
( ) this next Character being of a bigger proportion, must therefore represent some Integral Notion.
The Genus of it, viz. ( " 3 " ) is appointed to signifie Oeconomical Relation. And whereas the Transverse
Line at the end toward the left hand, hath an affix, making an acute Angle, with the upper side of the
Line, therefore doth it refer to the first Difference of the Genus, which according to the Tables, is relation
of Consanguinity: And there being an Affix making a reight Angle at the other end of the same Line,
therefore doth it signifie the second Species under this Difference, viz. Direct ascending, by which the
Notion of Parent is defined. And this being originally a Noun of Person, doth not the need therefore
Transe. Note of Person to be affixed to it. If it were to be rendred Father in the strictest sense, it would
be necessary that the Transcendental Note of Male should be joyned to it, being a little hook on the top,
over the middle of the Character, after this manner ) The word Father in the most Philosophical and
proper sense of it, denoting a Male Parent. And because the word Parent is not here used according to
the strictest sense, but Metaphorically; therefore might the Transcendental Note of Metaphor, be put
over the head of it, after this manner, ). But this being such a Metaphor as is generally received in
other Languages, therefore there will be no necessity of using this mark. (Wilkins, 1668: 396)
350 Fredric F. M. Dolezal
Wilkins implies that a proper reading would begin "our metaphorical Parent," not "our
metaphorical Male Parent." As correct as he seems, the parenthood of God derives from a
reasonable 10 reading of the text, not a feminist reading. The OED states that the relation of
Father to the Christian community is regenerative and adoptive, not metaphorically
consanguineous. Wilkins takes the further step of deleting the "male" designation altogether. He
had the option, using his own definition and philosophical system, to analyze father as God the
Father·, in his explication of the Nicene Creed we find, "I believe in [am believing] God the
Father Almighty [...]" (Wilkins, 1668: 405). Perhaps because the Lord's Prayer has a universal
tone, rather than the theologically specific nature of a creed, it can more easily be rendered
philosophically. The assertion that the metaphor of Divine Parent is "generally received in other
Languages" supports the universal, thus scientific, reading.
Wilkins did not just take an English version of the prayer and work out his philosophical
analysis. The occurrence of "bread Expedient" for "daily bread" tells us that he must have
considered the textual history of the prayer: in the Greek translation the phrase reads, "αρτον
[...] επιουσιον". Emovaiov is a hapax legomenon: Bauer (see Arndt, Danker and Gingrich
1979) and his successors do not show awareness of Wilkins' contribution to Biblical text
analysis. The appropriateness and ingenuity of the Wilkins solution to the mystery of "our daily
bread" deserves a thorough analysis. Therefore, I must leave this highly interesting example of
linguistic and philological analysis to Part Two of this series.
3. Wilkins' Language as Knowledge of the World
Alphabetically ordered dictionaries that do not proclaim a philosophical motivation can

present definitions entry by entry without providing a greater context for each entry than the
citational evidence held within the publisher's vault. Specialized dictionaries can ignore the
vocabulary of "ordinary" language, supposing the reader can integrate the technical with the
ordinary by looking first in a general and then in a specialist dictionary. Wilkins' attempt to
construct a philosophical dictionary of the world of things and notions impelled him to consider
meaning beyond definition. Concepts are not just matched to words, but to affixes, compounds,
phrases, word components (features), associative lists of words and the interrelationships and
interconnections among all of these. A scientific taxonomy is not sufficient; there must be
linguistic elements that open the classification to unlisted items and a systematic method to apply
the elements. A definition of an item exists as an abstraction that requires an application (a
The use of "reasonable" refers to the ecclesiastical, philosophical and ideological tradition in which Wilkins
participates: "the reasonableness of Christianity" is a trope common to scientists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac
Newton. Reason and scripture do not collide in this theology: reason is a necessary component for a reasonable
relationship with the Divine nature and human existence.
context) before we can speak of its meaning. For Wilkins the primary application was the world,
and the secondary application was the moment of discourse in which an item occurs; it was in
this context that he determined meaning. The philosophical unfolding of Our Father implies an
approach to defining human knowledge that assumes a context of historical and cultural
dimensions: that language is the humanly flawed arbiter of what we believe we know.
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The Dictionary as Philosophy: Reconstructing the Meaning of Our Father

Chapter · January 1995

Dictionary as Text and Literary Lexicography View project

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Fredric F.M. Dolezal

1. Philosophical Language and its Dictionary

That a dictionary of philosophy should be something quite different than a philosophical

of science. The production of scientific dictionaries 1 (as opposed to dictionaries of science)

2. Wilkins' Dictionary, Tables, and the Lord's Prayer

[...] Direct [...] ascending [...]

constructed according to philosophical principles. Within the tradition of English lexicography,

3. Wilkins' Language as Knowledge of the World

Alphabetically ordered dictionaries that do not proclaim a philosophical motivation can

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