Thank you for an insightful post. You present a strong argument demonstrating that knowledge representation (KR) has deep historical roots that far predate modern computing. Your examples, from Egyptian hieroglyphs to Aristotle’s categorical logic and Leibniz’s characteristica universalis, clearly show that humans have long sought ways to represent and reason about the world. These examples effectively highlight how early philosophers laid the groundwork for ideas of KR and reasoning, concepts modern computing and artificial intelligence (AI) later formalised.
I particularly appreciate how you connected Leibniz’s symbolic language and logical calculus to the “Age of Reason,” showing the progression from philosophical abstraction to structured methods of reasoning. This aligns well with the goals of contemporary KR, where representation is not only about storing knowledge but also enabling reasoning to derive new insights.
Your inclusion of McCarthy and Hayes (1969) provides a bridge between the philosophical origins of KR and its computational applications. It underscores how ancient ideas have influenced the evolution of KR into a cornerstone of AI. It might be interesting to explore specific examples of how these historical ideas have influenced modern KR tools, such as ontologies, to show this progression in more detail. Overall, your argument is well-structured and insightful.
References
McCarthy, J. & Hayes, P.J. (1969) ‘Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence’, in Meltzer, B. & Michie, D. (eds) Machine Intelligence 4: 463-502. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.