Trying to Classify and Control the English Language

We can perhaps date the Enlightenment, that period in British history when ignorance and religious superstition began to be replaced by scientific enquiry and logical reasoning, to the establishment of the Royal Society in London in 1660. Its purpose was to advance understanding of the world around us, whether physical or social, through the pursuit of knowledge. John Locke, the Scottish philosopher, writing in the 1670s and ‘80s, in his most important work, ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, said that if language could be used more clearly, then all argument and conflict would just fall away.