The idea of an alphabet of human thought originates in the 17th century, when proposals were first made for a universal language.

René Descartes suggested that the lexicon of a universal language should be composed of primitive elements. By systematically combining these, one could generate "an infinity of different words." In the early 18th century, Gottfried Leibniz outlined a language in which grammatical and logical structure would coincide, thus making possible the automation of thinking. The basic elements of his ideal language were characters representing unambiguously a limited number of elementary concepts. Leibniz called the inventory of these concepts "the alphabet of human thought."