Verse:Irta/Jacob Wellwise

Jacob Wellwise was a dialectician, lawyer, linguist and composer.

Early life

School dropout?

Personality

Wellwise is described by many of his contemporaries as sharp, witty, musical, sensitive, and sometimes literal-minded, which he considered a blessing when it came to his dialectical ability. He also had a natural tendency to tinker and fidget, which he described in his autobiography:

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Works

Dialectic

Wellwise is notable for writing lots of commentaries on established works at the time – secular, religious, scientific, and even fiction. However he wrote only one treatise, On Fallacies, devoted entirely to logical fallacies, misuse of logic and rhetoric, and how to avoid it.

His works laid the foundation for most Remonitionist philosophy and have stood the test of time.

Law and government

a critique of monarchy and class, based on a dialog with an Albionian?

Music

Wellwise was also a prolific composer and music theorist. As he was mainly a lutenist and fiddler, his speculations on the theory of music were based on traditional lute frettings at the time, which are described as "six points between strings, which are free to be moved", interpreted in many ways as 15, 16, or 17 divisions to the octave.

His most prominent mathematico-musical feat was to compute a 17-tone equal division of the octave, using a Machin-like formula for log(2). He however advised that this be understood purely theoretically, and not be employed in actual musical performances. For performers, he suggested many different lute frettings based on ratios in the tradition of Hirom of Thymiaterium, as well as suggestions for more expressive intonation for bowed string players.

Linguistics

Wellwise's linguistic interests were primarily in dialectology. He travelled throughout Irtan England and wrote a diary of phonetic and lexical features of various Irtan dialects of English. He later became an inspiration for many dialectologists all over Irta.