The Search for the Perfect Language - Grand Format

The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophes of the Fall and at Babel.
The recovering of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story Umberto Eco tells ranges widely, from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins.
To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, the author links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European history.