Wednesday 1 June 2016 at 18:15
Largely forgotten today in the shadow of his more famous father, the 17th-century Flemish alchemist Francis van Helmont influenced and was friends with the likes of Locke, Boyle, and Leibniz. While imprisoned by the Inquisition, in between torture sessions, he wrote his Alphabet of Nature on the idea of a universal natural language. Je Wilson explores.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/06/01/francis-van-helmont-and-the-alphabet-of-nature/