General Semantics's topics - tribe.net

Multiordinality

2007-11-19T19:25:20Z

Hello. I discovered tribe.net just a few days ago and it pleased me to find a General Semantics group here.

I've read "Science and Sanity" a few times over the past several years and one part that really boggles me is Korzybski's notion of "multiordinality", specifically with regard to the test for "multiordinality" which he gives on page 433 of the 5th edition.

I've asked about this several time in other internet fora dealing with General Semantics but have not yet gotten an answer which resolves my questions. I've even gotten responses to the effect that I should just ignore that passage because it is one of Korzybski's weakest points and not at all vital to the project as a whole.

Since the last post in this group appears to have been made back in July, I'm not even certain if this group is at all active anymore. But I'll take a shot anyway and ask if there is anyone out there who might like to assist me in understanding what Korzybski intends by "multiordinality".

Thanks.

posted in General Semantics - 1 reply

NEED VOCABULARY HELP

2007-07-29T18:27:50Z

can anyone give me an E-Prime substitute for "was born"?

posted in General Semantics - 8 replies

The E-Primer

2007-04-01T12:58:35Z

http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eprime.pl

posted in General Semantics - 2 replies

Meeting in Linguistics/Mersin University/Türkiye

2007-04-01T12:56:52Z

Hi everbody.
In my university Mersin University/Türkiye there is highly-qualified linguistics department and we are very active.
We have a conference which will be held October 2007.
It is open for any graduate student in linguistics.
But we think to set a session for undergraduate students like me.
But for now this is only a project.
If you are interested you can get information from here:

http://postgraduate2007.mersin.edu.tr/

or contact with me.

See you :)

posted in General Semantics - 0 replies

Objections to E-Prime

2007-03-09T14:34:45Z

Proponents of E-Prime claim that by removing all uses of the verb “to be” from the English language, we can more accurately evaluate the world and the relation of the human mind to that world. Noticing that SOME uses of the verb “to be” smuggle in metaphysical assumptions, disguise opinion as fact, and cloud our view of experiential data, advocates of E-Prime recommend that we throw out ALL uses of this multifarious verb. This “linguistic cleansing” is supposed to get rid of our habitual language-based prejudices and allow us to think more clearly. This strikes me as an exceedingly simple-minded and clumsy approach to a complex and multifaceted problem, a bit like amputating a persons foot to treat an ingrown toenail (if you "are" an E-Prime enthusiast and find this sentence completely bone-headed, at least note that it used no form of the "forbidden verb").

Contrary to what E-Primers say, it seems to me that there are plenty of perfectly legitimate and helpful uses of the verb “to be.”

Consider for example, the present progressive tense. “What is Bob doing?” “Bob is jogging”. I find it difficult to see any principled reason to call this a misuse of language. It communicates clearly what “is” taking place in the world (assuming Bob “is” in fact jogging). With E-Prime, we lose the present progressive tense. E-Primers can try to sidestep this by saying something awkward, like “Bob currently jogs” or something that doesn’t strictly answer the question, like “Bob went jogging 20 minutes ago.” But aside from a heroic devotion to purging the English language of “isness” come what may, it’s hard to see why either of these are preferable to the simple and informative “Bob is jogging.”

Another use of “is” that seems perfectly legitimate to me is the “is of class membership.” A square “is” a rectangle, a parrot “is” a bird, a human “is” an animal, and so on. We can also add negatives to this list: A triangle “is not” a rectangle, a spatula “is not” a bird, and a human “is not” a plant. If this use of “isness” is a mistake, I would like to know why.

Yet another use of “to be” forbidden by both E-Prime and General Semantics is the “is of prediction.” This assigns properties and relations to things: this book “is” made of paper and ink; George “is” sad right now; the nearest burger stand “is” northwest of here on High Street. To a normal English speaker, any of these might be a highly informative statement, so why ban them? Why trouble ourselves over ways to recast them in “beingless” terms when their meaning “is” so readily apparent?

And lest we forget, the dreaded “is of identity”--a grand blasphemy against General Semantics, E-Prime, and several other “linguistic cleansing” systems. It seems to me that the is of identity has plenty of reasonable uses, like pointing out that two intentional concepts pick out the same referent. For example, we might say that “the morning star is the evening star,” noting that both of these terms refer to the same object—namely the planet Venus. For someone who did not realize that these two terms referred to the same entity, this use of “is” is informative and accurate. The same goes for the statement “Clark Kent is Superman”. This expresses an important and legitimate identity that gets captured with elegant simplicity by the word “is”. Another example: “heat is molecular motion”. To say that “heat causes molecular motion” or “heat results from molecular motion” would simply be a scientific mistake, like saying “Clark Kent causes Superman” or “Venus causes the Evening Star”. In clumsy E-Prime we could say "Heat equals molecular motion", but this gains us no further insight, and we lose some points in the style department. Identities exist, and I see no reason to dance around them when we have a very simple verb that covers the territory nicely.

All that said, I want to make it emphatically clear that I am not claiming that ALL uses of the verb “to be” are reasonable. I am claiming that SOME are reasonable, and that as such, trying to rid ourselves entirely of the copula seems profoundly undermotivated.

Furthermore, it seems that we can make perfectly idiotic, unjust, incomprehensible, and bigoted claims in perfect E-Prime. Consider a couple of E-Prime friendly statements I found in an article in the current issue of the Christian magazine Charisma: “Greek culture provided a universal language for communicating the gospel, and the Greek’s worldview eroded many of the deceptive foundations of false religion.” Apparently perfect nonsense “is” compatible with perfect E-Prime. The same article later cautions believers: “Don’t miss the revolutionary message of Christmas: The birth of Christ reveals God as a living, supernatural force in the lives of His people.” I won’t bother to enumerate the multitude of problems with this statement, but I will note in passing that use of the verb “to be” is NOT among them. Compare these two massively muddled proclamations with any of the examples of “isness” statements I gave, like “the Morning Star is the Evening Star” or “a square is a type of rectangle,” and consider whether the use of the verb “to be” is the source of our habitually muddled thinking, and whether its elimination would really solve these problems, or merely mask them.

It seems to me that what is needed is not the removal of the copula from our language, but more careful and considered usage of that Swiss Army Knife of verbs. We can evaluate uses of “is” on a case-to-case basis rather than relying on the seemingly dogmatic generalization “is = bad.” I’ve given some uses of “ises” that I consider valid, and these examples can be multiplied indefinitely. There are other evaluational tools that strike me as far more promising than E-Prime, for example what General Semantics calls the “extensional approach” which involves (among other things) making our definitions accountable to the facts, rather than the other way around. Acute awareness of our highly fallible nature is another tool that I believe can improve our evaluating. Neither of these approaches require the banishment of the dreaded copula, though they might help us use it more carefully, which seems to me like a good thing.

My belief that you should all stop worrying and learn to enjoy copulation probably puts me in a small minority in this tribe, but it should make interesting fodder for discussion at any rate. Knowledge “is” always a work in progress.

posted in General Semantics - 60 replies

Classes, Practice Groups, Workshops?

2007-03-09T14:20:22Z

I would very much like formal lessons, structured practice, interactive feedback -- anything that might help me learn faster.

I can easily travel in the Bay Area for weekly instruction or to almost anywhere for weekend or week long workshops or seminars.

Please offer commments, suggestions about Bay Area classes or practice groups, future workshops anywhere, or on-line or teleconference classes.

posted in General Semantics - 1 reply

Esperanto

2006-04-02T20:24:23Z

Are there similar purposes or uses of Esperanto and as there are for E-prime?

I am sensing there may be parallels of usefulness between the two.

Victor
.........

posted in General Semantics - 0 replies

Categorization

2005-12-19T18:43:04Z

“Hardening of the Categories”. Memory processes tend to work with generalized categories. If people do not have an appropriate category for something, they are unlikely to perceive it, store it in memory, or be able to retrieve it from memory later. If categories are drawn incorrectly, people are likely to perceive and remember things inaccurately. When information about phenomena that are different in important respects nonetheless gets stored in memory under a single concept, errors of analysis may result. For example, many observers of international affairs had the impression that Communism was a monolithic movement, that it was the same everywhere and controlled from Moscow. All Communist countries were grouped together in a single, undifferentiated category called “international Communism” or “the Communist bloc.” In 1948, this led many in the United States to downplay the importance of the Stalin-Tito split. According to one authority, it “may help explain why many Western minds, including scholars, remained relatively blind to the existence and significance of Sino-Soviet differences long after they had been made manifest in the realm of ideological formulae.”
“Hardening of the categories” is a common analytical weakness. Fine distinctions among categories and tolerance for ambiguity contribute to more effective analysis. http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19104/art6.html

Children Beat Adults in Memory Contest
By Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 17 May 2005
05:11 pm ET

When you need to remember specific details, try thinking like a child.

A new study pitted college-aged adults against 5- to 11 year-old kids in a memory contest. The younger contestants won by paying better attention to the details. Adults, it seems, get lazy.

In the experiment, both test groups were shown a picture of a cat and told that it had “beta cells inside its body.” Researchers then flashed 30 more pictures of cats, bears, and birds, and asked the subjects if these animals had beta cells.

Then, in a twist that was the real thrust of the study, the subjects were shown 28 more images – some of which they had seen in the first stage – and asked if they had seen the image before or not.

The children did very well on this second test, and the results showed that the younger the child, the more accurate the memory. The adults, however, flunked.

Older participants lumped animals into categories, and only paid attention to the details that helped them differentiate between species. When it came time to recognize specific differences in the pictures, they didn’t have the information to do so.

Most of the children, on the other hand, hadn’t yet learned to categorize, the researchers conclude, so they had to pay close attention to each picture to decide if it was a cat or not.

“As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences,” said Vladimir Sloutsky of Ohio State University and co-author of a paper on the study published in the May/June issue of the journal Child Development.

This doesn’t mean that adults can’t remember fine details. Later in the study, adults were shown pictures of imaginary insects and were able to pick them out of a lineup later on.

“They remembered them because they had to pay close attention,” said Sloutsky, who added that the adult memory is flexible and can do a fine job remembering details when asked.

Related Stories
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050517_memory.html

posted in General Semantics - 2 replies

General Semantics detractors?

2005-10-18T18:35:48Z

I first read about General Semantics in "Drive yourself Sane", followed by GS lectures by Korzybski.

When I mention GS sometimes I get comments that start with, "Without going into the merits of General Semantics...".

My questions are:

Who are the main detractors of GS?
What are the arguments?
Why isn't GS taught everywhere, but certainly at the High School level?

posted in General Semantics - 6 replies

Do What Thou Wilt...

2005-08-10T20:15:25Z

Greetings,

I have recently started a tribe that might be of potential interest to members of this tribe. It is called "Do what thou wilt", and is essentially an experiment in tribe.net anarchy and semi-random meme transmission. The idea is to have a forum with no particular theme, and no rules or interference from the moderator. I am simply interested to see what happens. It is a place to post whatever you want, whenever you want, and for whatever reason, no matter how long or short, or what topic. I would like to see it get active, but I'm not sure how it will turn out. All part of the anarchy aspect of it. Anyways, make of it what you will. Join or don't. Play nice or don't. Do what thou wilt...

tribes.tribe.net/dowhatthouwilt

Let the memes flow...

posted in General Semantics - 0 replies

E-primer Results

2005-06-22T20:43:37Z

Rather than feeling that I have gotten a direct, conspecuous benefit from using E-prime, I have gotten inconspecuous insights.

The words I have found myself using, make for greater understanding, EVEN with the low vocabulary, and uneducated [those who matriculated college, but you generally don't observe a difference.].

Those words that have entered my vocabulary are:

Accoutrement.
Communication, conversation, specious, sophistic,
fallacious, confer, understand, presume, foresee, concede,
Initiative, supposition, posit, Postulate, dubious,
"favorable evidence", perceive, conjecture, speculate,
evidentiary grounds, apparent, imply, infer, preconception,
"it's my impression”, discretion, scrutinize, process,
"to address", deter, prevent, resist, require, assign,
peaceful coexistence, permit, allow, compliance,
offer, permissible, tolerable, adopt, feign, equitable,
signaling, indicating, response, predicament, pursuit,
purpose, propose, "ill-disposed',

Using these words are clearer [more specific] and less emotionally charged, which facilitates communication with a greater range of people.

Victor.

Comments, are welcome. That's the reason for the post.

posted in General Semantics - 0 replies

Cross-pollenization?

2005-05-29T20:37:17Z

Would anyone care to expand on these? They relate to E-prime and are found in the "Collective Thought" thread on the Cognitive Science tribe http://cogsci.tribe.net

Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski Hypothesis from TOWARD UNDERSTANDING E-PRIME by Robert Anton Wilson

CHOMSKY - Linguistic Nativism

posted in General Semantics - 0 replies

Presence Listening in E-Prime. Comments?

2005-05-11T17:37:43Z

Presence Listening in E-Prime. Comments? Views? Opinions? Experiences?

Namaste, Wabi Seeker

In a discussion of presence listening Cornell pg 63 recommends

Focuser: It's saying "I'm sick of working so hard!"
Companion: You're hearing it say "I'm sick of working so hard."

A TO BE form appears twice in the Focuser's sentence: 1. "You're hearing" and 2. "I'm sick."

1. Dealing with progression and continuity.

Kodish and Kodish and others recommend using TO BE for the progressive form. Scorpio, on the other hand, recommends one reinstate process in the subject/object divide. Technically, the use of TO BE to express progression or continuity does not introduce an Aristotelian error of identification. However, some E-Prime advocates recommend that the continual use of TO BE in the progressive form tends to make the use in the identification form something which one falls into more easily. Moreover, the sentence fragment presents an opportunity to introduce and reinforce process directly. In this case, we can actively link the Focuser to the process of hearing pulling the Focuser more into the present.

Scorpio would recommend the response began

Companion: You continue to hear it say ...

or

Companion: You keep on hearing it say ...

2. Breaking the Is-ness predication, invoking disidentification.

Repeating "I'm sick" reinforces the attachment of the Focuser with sickness.

Here, speaking in e-Prime, the Companion would translate the quotation of
the Focuser into

Companion: ... "I feel sick of working so hard!"

So, In E-Prime, the Companion would say

Companion: You continue to hear it say "I feel sick of working so hard!"

--------------------
Cornell: Ann Weiser and Barbara McGavin. The Focusing Student's and
Companion's Manual, Part One. 2002. http://www.focusingresources.com/awc.html

Kodish and Kodish. Drive Yourself Sane. http"//www.amazon.com/exec/obido.../detail/-/0970066465/qid=1114478557/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/103-6895176-4323832

Scorpio, Dan. http://www.angelfire.com/nd/danscorpio/ep2.html

posted in General Semantics - 22 replies

Seeking Workshop Feedback

2005-04-01T16:08:38Z

In learning to speak E-Prime I intend to increase my awareness, connection, and empathy. I came here via Nonviolent Communication. I know just enough to know that not using TO BE does not necessarily mean I move myself closer to my goals. I can make errors of indexing and abstraction with or without TO BE.

I finally found a workshop that may help.

Summer Seminar-Workshop
July 11-17, 2005
Alverno College - Milwaukee, WI

Does anyone have any feedback on IGS workshops?

Namaste, Wabi Seeker
From

http://www.generalsemantics.org/news/alv-ssw.htm

Abstracting/Evaluating — Our day-to-day experiences are partial and incomplete abstractions of all that we could possibly see, hear, touch, taste or smell. Therefore the opinions and beliefs (or evaluations) we derive from those experiences ought to be tempered with some degree of tentativeness, uncertainty, and "to-me-ness."

Verbal Awareness — Language provides the primary tool for time-binding, for advancing progress within societies and cultures, as well as enabling individuals to adjust, adapt, survive and thrive within an increasingly chaotic verbal environment. We are, for the most part, unaware of the effects of our verbal environment on how we react to our daily experiences. How often do we react to words, labels, symbols and signs as if they were the 'real' things represented? Do we use language, or are we used by language? Who rules our symbols?

Non-Verbal Awareness — You could say that we live in two worlds – our verbal world of words (and thoughts, opinions, beliefs, doubts,etc.) and the non-verbal world of our actual sensory experiences. We live on the non-verbal levels, but many times our verbal pre-occupations preclude us from appreciating what we experience on a moment-to-moment, here-and-now, non-verbal basis. To what degree do we project our verbal world of expectations onto our non-verbal sensory experiences? Do we experience 'what is going on' in the moment, or do we see what we’re looking for, or hear what we expect to hear? Are we aware of ourselves, our non-verbal experiencing, and our limitations?

posted in General Semantics - 0 replies

Workshops? Practice Groups?

2005-03-29T21:21:39Z

About sex months ago, I immersed myself in NVC, E-Prime, and Focusing. I found lots of resources for NVC and Focusing. I need help with E-Prime. I found many papers and books on E-Prime and I read and study a lot. I practice by myself and I find writing much easier than speaking. When I write, I can go back and correct and think through the sentences. When I speak, I just blurt out one TO BE sentence after another. I need a workshop or practice group, someplace where I can get constructive feedback.

I would go anywhere in the world for an English E-Prime workshop.

Any ideas? Especially in the Bay Area?

posted in General Semantics - 2 replies

More Information on General Semantics

2005-03-29T17:35:22Z

The Institute of General Semantics (IGS) has a web site at the following location: http://www.general-semantics.org

posted in General Semantics - 2 replies

E-Prime

2005-03-17T03:20:50Z

Working with E-Prime: Some Practical Notes
January 15, 2001

E. W. Kellogg III and D. David Bourland, Jr., ©1990. All rights reserved. (Originally published in Etc., Vol. 47, No. 4, 376-92, 1990-91. Reprinted in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, published by the International Society for General Semantics in 1991.)

"To achieve adjustment and sanity and the conditions that follow from them, we must study the structural characteristics of this world first and, then only, build languages of similar structure, instead of habitually ascribing to the world the primitive structure of our language."

Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity.

LISTEN to almost any news report, and you'll find that we live in a world on the brink of political, social, and environmental crises. These man-made problems do not originate "outside" of us, but from the beginning have stemmed from the short-sightedness of human beings going about their daily tasks using two-valued true-or-false Aristotelian logic; a logic that has proven itself woefully inadequate to solving the complex problems of the twentieth century. The threats of nuclear war, overpopulation, and ecological disaster hang over our heads, and if we wish to survive as a species the solutions to these problems must also originate from us.

The science of ecology teaches us that we need to see through non-Aristotelian eyes, and deal with the world as an interdependent whole of interconnecting parts. And yet, the English language itself betrays us in this task, as its very structure trains us to use the old simplistic viewpoint we need so desperately to outgrow. Unless we as human beings learn to think and communicate differently and more effectively about our problems, we may soon find ourselves released from the necessity of having to think at all. The authors see E-Prime (English without the verb "to be") as a practical starting point in the development of such a non-Aristotelian language, and hope that our readers will find the information provided here useful should they choose to make E-Prime an integral part of their own lives.

Since the publication of Bourland's article, A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime, in 1965 (1), numerous articles, books, and even dissertations (see references 2-17), have appeared testifying to the effectiveness of E-Prime as a discipline that encourages, even forces, the user to write, speak and think more clearly and accurately. On the surface, the term E-Prime refers to an English language derivative that eliminates use of the verb "to be" in any form (such as "am", "is", "was", "are", "were", "be", and "been"). E-Prime allows users to minimize many "false to facts" linguistic patterns inherent in ordinary English, and to often move beyond a two-valued Aristotelian orientation which views the world through overly simplistic terms such as "true-or false", "black-or-white", "all-or-none", "right-or-wrong".

E-Prime automatically eliminates the "is-dependent", over-defining of situations in which we confuse one aspect, or point of view, of an experience with a much more complex totality (see 7 and 12 for more details). This over-defining occurs chiefly in sentences using the "is of identity" (e.g. "John is a scientist") and the "is of predication" (e.g. "The leaf is green"), two of the main stumbling blocks to a non-Aristotelian approach. E-Prime can also enhance creativity in problem solving, by transforming premature judgment statements such as "There is no solution to this problem" into more strictly accurate versions such as "I don't see how to solve this problem (yet)".

Although many people have found the idea of E-Prime intriguing, not many have attempted to put it into practice. Of those who have, some have mastered writing in E-Prime, and a few have mastered speaking or thinking in it. Whatever the virtues of E-Prime as a linguistic discipline, experience has shown that students can markedly benefit from the practical advice of their predecessors. In this paper, the authors will answer the major questions about the theory and practice of E-Prime that they have heard over the years, and provide useful guidelines that will smooth the path for those determined to make the discipline of E Prime their own.

You call E-Prime a "linguistic discipline." A linguistic discipline for what?

Within practical limits, users of E-Prime try to say exactly what they mean. When I (E.K.) say "almost always" I mean that and not "always". In my writing I almost always delete or modify such absolutisms, in speaking I try to do so, but sometimes don't succeed. I try to qualify what I say to make it more accurate, avoiding the absolutistic point-of-view by using qualifiers, like "in my experience", "as I see it". "to me", etc.

As a discipline, E-Prime, like general semantics (18), works to achieve a useful congruency between the verbal maps we make of experience, and the actual territory of experience itself. Although in the simplest sense E-Prime need only involve giving up any use of the verb "to be", in a practical sense it may also include other non-Aristotelian linguistic devices (such as dating and indexing (18), the avoidance of absolutisms (19), etc.) Thus, E-Primek denotes an E-Prime that also makes use of the general semantic formulations Korzybski suggested (18). My (E.K.) own preferred form of E-Prime (E-Primep ), aims at a phenomenologically ideal language(20) that represents and communicates the territory of my experience both to myself and others as clearly and accurately as possible.

How does E-Prime work?

Although one could describe E-Prime simply as English without the verb "to be", such a definition misses the profound transformation in personal orientation in the user that results from such a change. In essence, E-Prime consists of a more descriptive and extensionally oriented derivative of English, that automatically tends to bring the user back to the level of first person experience. In his book, Language, Thought and Reality (21), Benjamin Lee Whorf gives numerous examples of languages and cultures that support his "principle of linguistic relativity". This principle states that the structure of the language we use influences the way we perceive "reality", as well as how we behave with respect to that perceived reality.

For example, if you saw a man, reeking of whisky, stagger down the street and then collapse, you might think (in ordinary English) "He is drunk". In E-Prime you would think instead "He acts drunk", or "He looks drunk". After all, you might have encountered an actor (practicing the part of a drunken man), a man who had spilled alcohol on himself undergoing a seizure of some kind, etc. Instead of simply walking by, you might instead look a little more carefully and end up sending for an ambulance.

Although E-Prime usually reduces hidden assumptions, it does not exclude them. For example, you may have seen a woman, or a robot, or an alien, etc., that looked like a man and acted drunk. E-Prime fosters a worldview in which the user perceives situations as changeable rather than static, and in which verbal formulations derived from experience indicate possibilities rather than certainties.

Thus, removing the verb "to be" from English results in a language of a more phenomenological character (20), in that this change can automatically reduce the number of assumptions in even simple sentences. Statements made in E-Prime almost always mirror first person experience more adequately than the "is" statements they replace. E-Prime also greatly encourages one to use the active voice ("I did it", "Smith did it") rather than the often misleading, information poor, and even psychologically crippling (4) passive voice ("it was done").

If you can just translate a statement bristling with forms of "to be" from ordinary English to E-Prime, so what? Why bother?

In the first place, you can't. If you don't notice the difference between the statement "The rose is red", and "The rose looks red to me", then you should 1. choose another article to read; 2. ask your designated driver to take you home; or 3. find a book by Wendell Johnson, Sam Bois, or Irving Lee on general semantics and get ready for some really fascinating insights.

One simply cannot take a body of work written in ordinary "is" English, and by recasting it into E-Prime say "exactly the same thing". (16) Almost by necessity the writing will shift away from an Aristotelian and towards a more non-Aristotelian language structure (5). One can not rewrite documents such as the Holy Bible, The U.S. Constitution, Shakespeare, etc. into E Prime; one can only translate them into E Prime. Although I (D.B) once translated the opening part of the Declaration of Independence as an illustration of the difference that E-Prime can make - (I prefer my version naturally) - we certainly have not called for a complete rewrite of everything into E-Prime. In the first place, one can't rewrite these and other precious documents without changing their "meaning" as mentioned earlier. And in the second place, neither of us has the time even to begin such an endeavor, however much we might like to view the result!

Some languages do not have a verb exactly like "to be". Does this mean that native speakers of these languages think and communicate more clearly than do speakers of ordinary English?

The absence of the verb "to be" in a language does not necessarily confer any advantages to it. Rather than focusing on the absence of a verb that functions syntactically exactly like the English "to be", we need to address ourselves to the mechanisms of identity and predication used in a particular language. For example, Russian and Hebrew usually employ (in the present tense) simple juxtaposition for identity and predication structures. Literally translated into English, we would find, for example, "I farmer". Remedial procedures analogous to E-Prime for other languages will of necessity depend on the syntactic structure of the particular language involved. General semantics, and the discipline of E-Prime, address the semantic problems peculiar to English. In Science and Sanity, Korzybski (18) targeted three main semantic factors of the English language which he felt needed of revision in order to make general adjustment and sanity possible: 1. the subject-predicate form, 2. the "is" of identity, and 3. the elementalism of the Aristotelian system (see Note 1). E-Prime completely removes two of these factors in one stroke.

I want to use the "is of identity" in identifying and classifying. Surely the scientific method depends on determining what "IS" and "IS NOT" true. What harm can possibly result from using "to be" in this context?

Classification does not depend on "this is this and that is that", but on scientists labeling "this" (phenomenon) by "that" (label). Actually, one might claim that scientific progress depends on the unmasking of assumptions masquerading as scientific facts or as "universal" laws. E-Prime can work synergistically with the scientific method in exposing artifacts - a scientist would not say "This is true" but instead "The available evidence supports hypothesis X". Science doesn't depend on "common sense" but on the scientific method, which deals in probabilities and not certainties.

When scientists (or anyone else for that matter) forget that a label "is not" the thing indicated by the label, they can get into serious trouble. When I (E.K) test an enzymes activity in a spectrophotometer, I assume that all of my reagents have proper labels, I assume that the balance on which I weigh these reagents gives reasonably accurate readings, I assume I know the chemical reactions involved through my training and by inference, and I assume that the spectrophotometer works properly. However, I actually only see a pen making a line on a paper chart! I know from hard experience that any one of the assumptions I made could have, and on occasion indeed have, proved false and resulted in false readings. E-Prime can make one much more aware of such covert assumptions, and in making these assumptions overt can give the user the opportunity to correct for them.

Actually, users of the scientific method cannot prove that a hypothesis "is true", only that it "is not true". "Hypothesis" by definition means a "tentatively assumed proposition" which makes phrases like "this hypothesis is true" oxymoronic. One would need to look at all the crows in the universe to prove the proposition that "All crows are black", but one needs only one white crow to prove it false. Many working scientists don't clearly understand this intrinsic limitation of the scientific method - that except in the case of the trivial (e.g. the validation of a specific fact - "this particular crow has black feathers") it can disprove a hypothesis, and cannot prove it. Instead, the method does allow scientists to judge a hypothesis as more or less probably valid, given the evidence available to them at a particular time and place.

Why E-Prime? Why eliminate ALL uses of the verb "to be"?

In principle, if not in practice, we agree that in some instances one could use forms of "to be"( in its auxiliary, existence, and location modes) without causing appreciable "semantic damage". Even so, most English teachers would agree that most of us overuse and misuse the verb, and that even a 75% reduction in its use would improve our writing and speaking skills. But why go to the extreme of trying to eliminate it totally? Because for better or worse, it looks like only an all-or-nothing approach to this problem works successfully. De Morgan, Santayana, Korzybski, and many general semanticists have warned against misuses of the verb like the "is" of identity, yet they continued to misuse it themselves!

We see the misuse and overuse of the verb "to be" by English speakers as a kind of linguistic addiction. It allows us to play God using the omniscient "Deity Mode" of speech, as when we say "That is the truth". It allows even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god like pronouncements on the nature of things. Its overuse allows one to communicate sloppily without unduly taxing the brain by trying to come up with more appropriate verbs.

Let's compare this linguistic "addiction" to one more mundane - cigarette smoking. Although reducing cigarette smoking from two packs to two cigarettes a day might reduce lung cancer to a level not significantly different from not smoking at all, no medical authority that we know of recommends this. And why? Because it rarely, if ever, works. Very few people can go from overuse to moderation in use - the temptation for old habits to reassert themselves proves just too strong. Although a less extreme form of E-Prime that allows for an occasional use of "is" would probably accomplish the same goals, we have yet to see anyone manage this.

For those simply interested in writing only, a less drastic form of E-Prime (like E Prime mod (15)) might suffice. With word processing capabilities, one could easily edit and revise writing in accordance with non-Aristotelian and phenomenological principles, checking each individual usage of "to be" for possible misuses. Given the word processing technology available today (1990), self-proclaimed general semanticists no longer have any excuse for not ridding their prose of instances of the "is of identity" and "is of predication". However, we ourselves have found it unnecessary to use the verb "to be" even in its more benign aspects -- indeed, we have found that eliminating these usages has improved our writing style.

Perhaps most importantly, I (E.K.) very much doubt whether I could have learned to comprehensively eliminate misuses of "to be" in my speaking, and finally in my thinking, without the simple, and easily understood discipline that pure E-Prime requires. The simplicity of the basic rule allows me to make changes in real time, while speaking or thinking.

What about critics of E-Prime, who while admitting that E-Prime sounds like an interesting idea, claim that it can never work, and that eliminating all uses of "to be" from English damages the language in fundamental ways?

Criticisms of E-Prime often depend on theoretical arguments that have little validity in actual practice. In our experience E-Prime not only does not damage English, but as we have already pointed out, it actually improves it in a number of interesting and significant ways. Still, does E-Prime have any disadvantages? Unfortunately, yes, and the prospective user will have to decide on their relative importance. First, you lose the helping verb function of "to be" indicating a continuous process. For example the statement "it is raining outside", translates to "it continues to rain outside", which indicates the progressive mode in another way. One also loses the use of "to be" implying a future condition, as in "He is coming". In E-Prime one could say "He comes" (dramatic!), or "He will come later", or more specifically, "John said that he left the office 15 minutes ago and should arrive any minute now".

In the context of poetry, the E-Prime user may lose some of the power of metaphor ("He is a tiger"), although one can compensate for this loss by using similes ("He acts like a tiger!"). On the other hand, poets who use E-Prime will find themselves forced to vary their verb choices, a process that can add to the evocative power of a poem. E Prime also forces a substantial reduction in the use of the passive voice ("It was done" ), but except in special instances, such a reduction would usually prove beneficial, rather than detrimental.

Of course, learning to write and speak in E Prime involves the disadvantage that one has to devote a certain amount of time and effort to the task, especially in the early stages. Writing acceptably in E-Prime initially involves additional drafts, and even final versions may sound awkward until this new writing skill has developed. Overall, most criticisms of E-Prime in regard to its potential applications as a spoken or written language seem woefully premature, as it has not yet had time to grow and develop.

I have heard that if we learn to write, speak, etc. in E-Prime that we will AUTOMATICALLY reduce the level of dishonesty, bigotry, etc., in our lives. How does this come about?

First of all, it doesn't. Neither of us has ever made such claims for E-Prime, although I (D.B.) once had Time magazine attribute such views to me. (23) One can lie or express bigotry in E-Prime just as you can in ordinary English. For example you can say "I didn't take the money!" when you did, or "The XYZ race smell like pigs", when they do not. While the discipline of E-Prime aims at reducing dishonesty and prejudice (pre-judging) in our communications, the technique of E-Prime does in no way guarantee such a result. We have found that while E-Prime can facilitate honest communication, that as in any other language, the intention of the individual involved plays the predominant controlling role.

E-Prime does not cure or resolve all linguistic and behavioral problems. Sometimes, general semanticists feel called upon to point out this unfortunate situation to us, often as if to say something to the effect of, "Well, if E-Prime doesn't solve all of my problems, I really don't see any reason to bother with it!"

However, consider what this easily teachable technique does accomplish: (1) E-Prime can make communication clearer and more understandable by lowering the level of abstraction and bringing it closer to the level of first person experience; (2) it resolves two of the main semantic problems that Korzybski educed in English; (3) it can improve self-esteem by providing immediate prophylaxis for those who tend "to live their lives in the passive voice"; and (4) it invites attention to the verbal excesses of those who enjoy speaking in the "Deity Mode".

When I try to write in E-Prime my writing sounds awkward. I write much more easily in "is" English. I realize that eventually I will learn to use E-Prime more effectively, but how can I make it through this transitional period without losing my job?

We can tell you from personal experience that most of this awkwardness derives from the problems inherent in using any new language. The more you use E-Prime, the more your skills will improve. By simply following the rule (no forms of "to be") anyone can write in E-Prime, but it usually takes a great deal of practice and creative effort before a person can learn to write in it well. Over the years many people (who knew nothing of our idiosyncrasy) have complimented us on both our speaking and writing skills - but it took years of practice before this happened. As far as using E-Prime in work-related writing, it will probably work better for the novice user at first to simply try to minimize instances of "to be" as much as feels "stylistically comfortable", with the aim of eventually writing professionally in 100% E Prime as skill improves. Of course, we still recommend writing in 100% E-Prime in less critical areas (personal letters, diaries, notes, etc.) during this transition period.

Our skill in using E-Prime increases continuously, and we can honestly say that our stylistic limitations derive not from E Prime as a language, but from limitations inherent in our present abilities. We do not speak in E-Prime as well as we write in it, and our skills in speaking E-Prime will probably remain several years behind our skills in writing in E-Prime into the foreseeable future. Although we understand the difficulties facing a novice user learning E-Prime, "this too shall pass", with time and practice.

When I try to write in E-Prime I tend to sound either wishy-washy or spaced out --- most of my sentences include "seems" or "appears" instead of "is", and even my factual descriptions sound indefinite. How can I change this?

Novice writers in E-Prime often still write using "to be" sentence structures (14), and often try simply to replace deleted "is's" with "seems" and "appears". Such sentence structures often use the passive voice, as in "It was done". At first one might translate this as "It appears done", but by moving from the passive to the active voice one can proceed to a much less "wishy washy", and more informative version, as in "Dan did it". Similarly, one need not translate "The rice is cooked" into "The rice seems cooked", but instead can redescribe the actual "event" more informatively as in "Russell cooked the rice".

Forms of the verb "to have" can make useful alternatives for their "to be" counterparts during the early stages of learning to use E-Prime. Quite often they can substitute with minimal or no changes in many "to be" style sentence structures. For example, "The rice is cooked" turns into "The rice has cooked", "There is a store . . ." changes into "They have a store . . .", etc. Because of its utility, however, beginners tend to overdo it and lapse into a form of pidgin E-Prime. Unfortunately, overuse of the verb "to have" brings its own set of problems,(24) leading the user to map/see the world in terms of objects and possessions instead of dynamic processes ( "I have a relationship to . . . " instead of "I relate to . . . "). As a verb, "to have" encourages the user to change action verbs into quasi-object nouns ("I have love" instead of "I love), so we recommend that students of E-Prime minimize their use of "to have" as soon as possible, and to release and make use of the trapped verbs instead.

In other instances, it helps to bring the "is" sentence back to the level of first person experience, and to use verbs that directly tie into that experience. Thus, instead of saying "The music is good", or the weak E-Prime alternative "The music seems good" one might instead say "The music sounds good". Other examples might include "She looks beautiful" instead of "She seems beautiful", and "This food tastes good" instead of "This food seems good". Please don't misunderstand, "seems and "appears" have their uses, especially in contexts where one wants to emphasize doubt. However, with practice you can learn to write in E-Prime without using them at all should you so choose, once you have learned more elegant alternatives to the "is style" sentence structures that require them as substitutes.

I feel that I use E-Prime fairly well for factual writing and reporting, but that it just doesn't work when I want to express myself creatively or poetically. Does the inherent nature of E-Prime as a language make it unsuitable for artistic expression?

As a glance through any good poetry anthology will show you (22), many major poets throughout English history, who could not have possibly heard of E-Prime, make very sparing use of "to be" in their work. In fact, with very little effort we have found complete poems written in perfect "E Prime" by Shakespeare, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Longfellow, Tennyson, Yeats, and Joyce! If anything, rather than hindering artistic expression, it appears instead that E-Prime might actually enhance it.

Imagine a third year student in French who tries to write poetry like Baudelaire, fails, and then blames the French language rather than his or her current lack of skill for the failure! If you try to use E-Prime for tasks beyond your current level of skill, and fail, it makes little sense to blame E-Prime for the failure. Criticisms of E-Prime in regard to its potential for use in creative endeavors appear at this time woefully premature, as it has not yet had time to grow and develop. At present, to our knowledge no one (let alone an artistic genius) has ever tried to write a novel, or epic poem, in 100% E Prime.

Who can say what a novelist like William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway might have written had they learned E-Prime as their native tongue instead of ordinary English? Again, can one judge the potential of French as a language by looking at the written works of a class of third-year French students? One might compare E-Prime at its present stage metaphorically to that of a seedling. E-Prime needs to grow and develop and one might hope that critics would refrain from criticizing it based on its current lack of "fruits", just as one would not criticize an apple seedling for not yet producing apples.

I've learned to write in E-Prime fairly well, and have even attempted to speak in it. I sounded awkward, and I had trouble holding even an ordinary conversation without leaving many sentences half finished. Why should I make the effort required to speak in E-Prime?

Speaking in E-Prime confers a number of advantages to people seriously interested in training themselves in non-Aristotelian thinking. We have found speaking in E-Prime an efficient and effective discipline, as its use forces us to incorporate general semantic principles in an integral way almost every time that we open our mouths! I (E.K.) also frequently translate the speech of others into E-Prime, and this has served me well as a buffer against signal reactions in my own thinking and behavior, and preventing signal reactions in others. I can often smooth out arguments in my vicinity simply by interjecting E-Prime translations of key statements into conversation. For example, if someone says "That is a stupid idea!" I might reply "What don't you like about it?", rather than "It is not!"

Most importantly however, the discipline of speaking in E-Prime eventually forced me (E.K.) to learn to think in E-Prime. The simplicity of the rule (don't use any forms of "to be") allowed me to make changes in real time, while speaking and eventually while thinking. In learning a foreign language, beginning students continue to think in their native language, while they translate their thoughts as best they can into the language they hope to learn. But experience has shown that in order to gain true fluency in a language a student must indeed learn to think in it. This point may sound trivial but it can have profound importance, as thoughts in one language may not have an adequate translation in another. And as we often see the world through the medium of the language we use, this shift can in fact change the way in which we experience the world. (21) Excluding "to be" - with its connotation of permanence, finality and completeness - can bring one to experience the world more as a process, as a world that changes, rather than one defined by static ideas and permanent objects. (11) These days I habitually think in E-Prime, and although this took me years to achieve, I see the effort involved as a trivial price to have paid when I consider the value of the result.

When you begin speaking in E-Prime you may often find yourself halfway through a sentence before you find to your dismay that you have nowhere to go but "is". We suggest in such cases you either stop, and rephrase the sentence into E-Prime, or if you have already finished the sentence, to redo the sentence either orally or mentally. Often this happens when you used the passive voice and put the object, rather than the subject, of a sentence first. To avoid this, try beginning each sentence, or clause, with the subject, to make sure that you will not inadvertently leave it out. For example, change "The hike was held . . .", to "The Sierra Club held the hike . . .". Look for patterns in the sentences that you can see no way to complete. Once you have discovered the pattern (often old "is" sentence structures) look for alternatives that satisfy you. They do exist, but you may have to work hard to find them, because in order to see them you will have to break through your own habitual patterns of language use.

I find it difficult to use E-Prime versions or responses to colloquial expressions such as "Who are you?" , "How are you?", "Is X there?, and "Where is Z ?" without sounding at least a little odd. How can I deal with standardized expressions like this?

In speaking E-Prime in a non-E-Prime world, I (E.K.) sometimes resort to "pidgin E Prime" in order to avoid statements which, although they make better logical sense than their English equivalents, may sound slightly awkward. For example, if someone asks me "Who are you?", instead of replying "My friends call me Ed", I might simply say "Ed". Of course, I assume the questioner really meant to ask "How do you label yourself?", and not "With what verbal concepts do you identify yourself as an existential being?" Other languages (for example French and Spanish) do in fact ask questions about one's name in a more logical manner (Comment vous appelez vous?, Como se llama usted?). Instead of asking "How do you label yourself?" you might simply substitute a general request for more personal information as in the imperative, "Tell me about yourself". Specific situations allow other E-Prime variations such as: "Your name, please?", (great for hotel desk clerks or telephone operators), "Would you please introduce yourself? I don't believe we've met before". (good for formal social occasions), "What name do you go by these days?" (great with disciples of Swamis who have changed their name, or bank robbers with a number of aliases), or even (for singles situations) "If I want to find your number in the telephone directory, what name should I look under?"

No matter how improved E-Prime versions of idiomatic English phrases appear from a general semantics point of view, they may still sound a little out of the ordinary to the unprepared listener. Instead of asking "How are you?", I might ask "How do you feel?", or "How has life treated you lately?" or even a West Coast alternative such as "How goes it?". On the telephone, instead of asking "Is Julie there?" I'd probably ask "May I speak with Julie?". Rather than asking "Where is X?" I might ask "Where can I find X?" or more elegantly, "Would you please direct me to X?" In my experience, even colloquial expressions have socially acceptable E-Prime equivalents, although it might take a fair amount of time and effort on your part to find one in any given situation.

On the other hand in the early days of trying to speak in E-Prime, I (D.B.), rationalized my use of polite formula "to be" dependent phrases in order to avoid the risk of sounding like a nut. Now I've decided to stick to E-Prime all the time, even if I do occasionally sound a trifle odd. Like my co-author, I also have found "pidgin E-Prime" useful during the transition period. Of course, we recognize that pidgin E-Prime can sound less than elegant, and condone its use only when necessary during the earliest phase. At this point, let me describe two devices I've employed to good advantage along these lines:

(1) Locate. Any student of Spanish can tell you that English does not have a verb that corresponds well to estar. By using "to locate" intransitively (and somewhat ungrammatically), and ignoring the durative aspect, we can come close to the meaning of estar. Instead of asking, "Where is X?" we can inquire "Where does X locate?" or "Where can I locate X?"

(2) Equals. We can dramatically illustrate the pervasive use of "to be" by the pidgin use of "equals" instead. Let's consider one example in detail. Originally, we can assume that a sincere, thoughtful person wrote this bit of semantic gobbledegook. The reader may wish to convert the "is-es" to "equals" to underscore the misery:

"Because language is the symbolization of thought, and symbols are the basic unit of culture, speech is a cultural phenomenon fundamental to what civilization is."

Now suppose we try to recast this assertion into E-Prime, and attempt to capture what the writer might have tried to express, but could not with all of those "is-es" of identity gumming up the works. We believe that the author, whose name we've withheld to protect the guilty, might have meant something like this:

"Because language depends upon the symbolization of thought, and because symbols define the basic unit of a culture, speech as a cultural phenomenon plays a fundamental role in civilization as we know it". (E.K.)

or this:

"Semantic reactions provide the basis for the linguistic and, more generally, symbolic behaviors that constitute the basic unit of cultures. Hence we must recognize speech (in the broadest sense) as a cultural phenomenon fundamental to each specific civilization". (D.B.)

From our point of view, the original "is-of identity" mode version sounds rather trite and pompous, whereas the E-Prime versions at least have the virtue of providing the basis for further scientific/philosophical investigations.

I find it very hard to vent my emotions in E Prime. I get much more satisfaction telling someone "You ARE an idiot!" than saying "You act like an idiot sometimes!". How can I overcome this deficiency?"

Each of us routinely use language to manipulate others, to get them to do what we want, and to provoke a physical or emotional response. In many ways "is" statements have much greater emotional impact than their E Prime equivalents. "You are a #%&*!" can evoke an emotional reaction significantly greater than the E-Prime equivalent, "You act like a #%&* sometimes!" "Is of identity" statements have the ability to powerfully stimulate signal reactions, not even giving a chance for the unprepared individual to buffer the blow consciously. However, this "disadvantage" as such applies mainly to written E-Prime. Spoken language has an emotional impact not just through what you say but through how you say it. Voice tone, rhythm, and inflection can drastically change the perceived meaning of a sentence. An innocuous "Thank you" said sarcastically can provoke an explosive response ("Don't you use that tone of voice to me!"). In this sense, E-Prime only modulates and does not control the affective content of speech. Or to put it another way, if you really want to provoke someone to punch you in the nose, you can do it in E Prime, with the time honored "F#%k you!" But why would you want to?

What effect does E-Prime have on our semantic reactions?

Korzybski (18) proposed the non elementalistic term "semantic reactions" to label more accurately the complex "cortico thalamic", "psychophysiologic", interplay typical of us as human beings and carried on uniquely by us as time-binders (see note 2). Research into this field has expanded greatly since Korzybski's time, and today(1990) scientists use terms such as psychosomatic, psychoneuroendocrinology, and psychneuroimmunology in their investigations into the mechanisms by which almost every aspect of our complex mind-body systems affects almost every other aspect. Thus "thinking" does not exist in isolation, as the way you think affects the way you feel, which affects the physiological functions of the endocrine and immune system, etc. Words can, and do, profoundly affect many different aspects of the mental-emotional physiological-biochemical-etc. complex that comprises our physical selves.

In our experience we've found E-Prime to have a significant impact on our semantic reactions. Although much of this impact occurs at "the silent level" (see note 3), we can at least point out how using E-Prime can reduce stressful reactions during daily life. If Ron tells me (E.K) that "Dick Tracy is a great movie", and I translate this into "Ron liked Dick Tracy", I can avoid feeling angry with John later when I discover that I did not like it. In fact, I might not even attend the movie in the first place knowing how John's taste in movies differs from mine. In the moment, if someone says to me "You are a #%&*!", I now automatically translate such a statement into a more benign E-Prime form such as "You have made me very angry!" As a result I experience a reduced stress response (feeling upset, increased heart rate, cold hands and feet, adrenaline rush, etc.) Similarly, in communicating with others, I've noticed that E-Prime doesn't "push their buttons" in the way that ordinary English used to, and that "heated" arguments rarely occur.

How can E-Prime improve creativity?

E-Prime can boost creativity in a number of ways, but let's look at just one. Problems that "are" unsolvable in ordinary English only seem unsolvable in E-Prime. This apparently subtle shift in attitude can make a great difference. When people say "That is impossible" they have in effect erected a mental brick wall by dismissing even the possibility of coming up with an answer to a particular question. If I (E.K.) say "That seems impossible", or "I don't see how to solve this problem (yet)", part of my mind continues working on the problem and often eventually finds one or more solutions to it.

Do you think that E-Prime will ever come into general use?

Yes - at least in diluted form. We see E Prime gaining acceptance in small stages where it has the most immediate advantages - as in the improved clarity seen in writing that reduces the use of is, am, are, was, and were to a minimum. This has already begun to happen. DeWitt Scott, a copy editor for the San Francisco Examiner and a writing consultant, recommends E-Prime as a useful writing tool because it "forces me to express myself in straightforward statements and come out of the clouds" (14). If a practical newspaperman can see the benefits of E-Prime in news reporting, one can hope that other writers will not lag far behind.

What sort of practical program would you recommend for learning to write and speak in E-Prime?

As a first step, concentrate on using E Prime in unimportant notes or letters, and in your personal diary. After you have gained some facility in writing in E-Prime, begin to use it for more serious work. Although it works best to have a goal of 100% E-Prime for your final version, expect to have a few "to be" sentences in the text in cases where the E-Prime version sounds overly awkward, etc.. Count any reduction in the incidence of "to be" in your written work as an achievement in the right direction. With continued effort your expertise in writing in E-Prime will increase to the point in which few, if any, readers will detect any abnormality of writing style: more than likely you will receive compliments on the clarity and improved quality of your finished work.

By the time you have learned to write easily in E-Prime, you will probably already have begun to speak in it occasionally. However, if you really want to reap the full benefits of the discipline, you will have to make a serious commitment to speaking in E Prime exclusively, because speaking in E Prime will force you to learn how to think in E-Prime. Just as with learning a foreign language, a time comes when you begin to think in the language rather than to only translate sentences into it, so with learning to speak in E-Prime. Unfortunately this process usually requires total immersion in the foreign language and culture and a serious commitment on the student's part. As we do not live in an E Prime culture, this makes your own personal commitment to speak in E-Prime doubly important.

When first learning to speak in E-Prime, you may have to rehearse each sentence mentally before you say it. For a while people might find your conversation a trifle limited, but as many people like to hear themselves talk most of all, they probably will not notice your reticence! Nodding the head, looking intelligently interested and occasionally mouthing words and phrases such as "yes", or "perhaps", "I agree", "indeed", etc., will prove adequate for all but the rarest of conversations, where someone actually wants to talk with rather than at you! In such a case, if you take on an attitude of deep thought, even half finished phrases and pidgin E-Prime may command respect! As mentioned earlier with respect to arguments, I have also found it valuable to practice translating the statements of others during conversations, and then feeding back the E Prime statement to the original speaker. You will probably feel surprised at the difference this can make.

Some Final Words

In our experience, writing and speaking in E Prime has proven itself an effective discipline for integrating non-Aristotelian thinking and behavior patterns even into so called habitual or even "unconscious" levels of the "mind-body". I (E.K.) not only write and speak in E-Prime, I think and even dream in it. Although E-Prime does not train one in all aspects of non-Aristotelian evaluation, it does a thorough job of training its students in some aspects, and facilitates the learning of many others. Learning to write and speak in E-prime can constitute the heart of an effective system of self-training in general semantics, and deserves serious consideration from individuals committed to the integration of non-Aristotelian processing into his or her habitual thought and behavior. We believe that you will find the results well worth the effort, and we look forward to hearing from you. But please - do it in E-Prime!

NOTES

1. Elementalism. Korzybski pointed out a variety of general semantic mechanisms that characterized the Aristotelian orientation. Among these he found: a. widespread identification, b. allness, c. a two-valued system of evaluation, d. ignoring the multiordinality of many important terms, e. an emphasis on an intensional rather than extensional definitions, and f. elementalism. (See reference 18, pp xl-xlii for a more detailed summary.) Korzybski perceived elementalism as especially harmful because of its pervasiveness. He used the term "elementalism" to label the procedure by which we focus on one or only a few aspects of complex, dynamic processes, verbally separate interdependent aspects, and then pretend to deal with them "objectively" as independent or separate. He saw examples of Aristotelian elementalism in discussions of "body" versus "mind", "feeling" versus "thinking", "space" as separable from "matter" and "time", etc.

Korzybski encouraged a non-elementalistic, non-Aristotelian, approach to life problems: personal, social, and scientific. He originated the use of the extensional device of the hyphen as a symbolic tool to foster a more holistic approach, as in terms such as space-time, body-mind, and psycho-logics, etc. At one time I (D.B.) tried to encourage the use of the non-elementalistic term, "socio-logics", (25) to little avail as yet.

2. Time-Binding. Alfred Korzybski's appearance on the intellectual scene began in 1921 with the publication of Manhood of Humanity. (26) In this work he defined humanity functionally as a time-binding class of life: labeling in this way the capability of human beings to pass on their intellectual accomplishments from generation to generation through the symbolic means of spoken and written language. This accounts for the exponential growth of human knowledge, as well as indicating the intrinsic anti-human bias of totalitarian regimes (of the right or the left) that characteristically prevent, or pervert, time binding processes. Korzybski's analyses of the mechanisms of time binding eventually led to the publication of his major work, Science and Sanity (18) in 1933.

3. Silent Levels. Korzybski's non Aristotelian model, as illustrated by his Structural Differential, makes use of an Event Level, an Object Level, and a Symbolic Level composed of an indefinitely great number of orders of abstraction. He referred to the Event and Object Levels as the "silent levels" whereon we basically "live our lives", despite the conscious human preoccupation with the Symbolic Level as well. With reference to the Structural Differential (see (18) pp 386-411), Korzybski said of it in his seminars, "It came to me in a flash, and I have spent the rest of my life trying to understand it."

REFERENCES

1. D. David Bourland, Jr., "A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime," General Semantics Bulletin, Vol. 32-33, pp. 111-114, 1965/1966. Reprinted in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, published by the International Society for General Semantics in 1991.

2. D. David Bourland, Jr., "The Semantics of a Non-Aristotelian Language", General Semantics Bulletin, Vol. 35, pp. 60-63, 1968

3. K.L.R. Bourland, "Coping with Semantic Problems in System Development", in Coping with Increased Complexity: Implications of General Semantics and General Systems Theory, ed. by D.E. Washburn and D. R. Smith, (New York,Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1975). Reprinted in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, published by the International Society for General Semantics in 1991.

4. Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A New Guide to Rational Living, North Hollywood, CA, Wilshire Book Company, Second Edition 1975; Albert Ellis, How to Live With a Neurotic, North Hollywood, CA, Wilshire Book Company, Second Edition 1975; Albert Ellis, Sex and the Liberated Man, Secaucus, N.J. Lyle Stuart, Inc., Second Edition of Sex and the Single Man, 1976; Albert Ellis, Anger: How to Live With and Without It, (Secaucus, N.J., Citadel Press, 1977); and Albert Ellis, Overcoming Procrastination, New York, Signet Books, Second Edition, 1977.

5. Robert Ian Scott, "Is-Less and Other Grammars", General Semantics Bulletin, Vol. 38-40, pp 42-49, 1976. Reprinted in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, published by the International Society for General Semantics in 1991.

6. Steven A. Elkind, To Be Or Not To Be: An Investigation of Linguistic Relativity by Altering the Language of Encounter Group Members in a Manner Suggested by General Semantics Theory. Ph.D. Dissertation, Los Angeles, California: California School of Professional Psychology, 1976

7. E. W. Kellogg III, "Speaking in E-Prime: An Experimental Approach for Integrating General Semantics into Daily Life", Etc., Vol. 44, No. 2, 118-28, 1987. Reprinted in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, published by the International Society for General Semantics in 1991.

8. Ruth S. Ralph, "Getting Rid of the To Be Crutch", in Classroom Exercises in General Semantics, ed. by Mary Morain. San Francisco: International Society for General Semantics, 1980. Reprinted in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, published by the International Society for General Semantics in 1991.

9. Bryon L. Cannon, An E-Prime Approach to the Holy Bible. M.S. Thesis. Fort Hays, Kansas: Fort Hays State University. 1987

10. Elaine C. Johnson, "Discovering E Prime", Etc. Vol 45, No. 2, pp181-183, 1988. Reprinted in To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, published by the International Society for General Semantics in 1991.

11. Paul Dennithorne Johnston, "Escape from a Frozen Universe: Discovering General Semantics", Etc., Vol 46, No 2, pp136-140, 1989.

12. D. David Bourland, Jr., "To Be Or Not To Be: E-Prime As a Tool for Critical Thinking", Etc., Vol. 46, No. 3, pp 202-211, 1989.

13. Robert Anton Wilson, "Toward Understanding E-Prime", Etc., Vol.46, No 4, pp316-319, 1989.

14. DeWitt Scott, "Writing that Works", Etc., Vol 46, No. 4, pp320-321, 1989

15. William Dallman, A letter on E-Prime, Etc., Vol. 47, No. 1, pp 77-78, 1990

16. D. David Bourland, Jr., "To Be or Not To Be: E-Prime as a Tool for Critical Thinking", in Thinking Creatiically, ed. by Kenneth G. Johnson. Institute of General Semantics, 1991

17. Robert Anton Wilson, Quantum Psychology, Phoenix, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 1990.

18. Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, Lakeville, CT: The International Non Aristotelian Library and Publishing Company, 1933. Fourth edition 1958.

19. Alan Walker Read, "Language Revision by Deletion of Absolutisms", Etc., Vol. 42, pp7-12, 1985

20. E. W. Kellogg III, "Mapping Territories: A Phenomenology of Lucid Dream Reality", Lucidity Letter, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp81-97, 1989

21. Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality, Cambridge, The M.I.T. Press, 1956. See also C. Weggelaar, "The Whorf Hypothesis: The Case of Dutch and English", Etc., Vol. 39 pp332-343, 1982

22. See for example: Helen Gardner, ed. The New Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1950, New York, Oxford University Press, 1972, or Joseph Auslander and Frank Ernest Hill, eds., The Winged Horse Anthology, New York, Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1929.

23. Time, "Behavior", p.69, May 23, 1969

24. Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be, (New York, Harper & Row, 1976)

25. D. David Bourland. "Preliminary Notes on `Foci of Synthesis': General Semantics and the Principle of Least Effort", General Semantics Bulletin, No. 1 & 2, pp. 17-21, 1949-1950.

26. Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, New York: E.P. Dutton. 1921 Second Edition distributed by the Institute of General Semantics.

Reprinted with permission of The International Society for General Semantics

Copyright © 2000 International Society for General Semantics

posted in General Semantics - 17 replies

WHAT I BELIEVE by Korzybski

2005-03-10T18:24:51Z

WHAT I BELIEVE

Author’s Note: This was originally written in 1948 in response to an invitation from Mr. Krishna Mangesh Talgeri, M.A. of 26, Atul Grove, New Delhi, India, to contribute to a symposium entitled, The Faith I Live By. It is to be published soon, and includes such international contributors as Gandhi, Nehru, Montessori, John H. Holmes, Radhakrishnan and others. I admit that without Mr. Talgeri’s invitation, and the most valuable assistance of Miss Charlotte Schuchardt, which I wish to gratefully acknowledge, I would never have undertaken the difficult task of formulating such a condensed summary of life studies and experiences which any ‘credo’ would require.

I AM deeply honored to participate in the Symposium, The Faith I Live By, compiled and edited by Krishna M. Talgeri, and to contribute this paper particularly written for the contemplative audience of Indian readers. This is the first opportunity I have had to write a ‘credo’, where I do not need to go into theoretical explanations.

It happens that I come from an old family of agriculturists, mathematicians, soldiers, jurists, and engineers, etc. When I was five years old my father, an engineer, gave me the feel of the world’s most important scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century, which prepared the groundwork for the scientific achievements of the twentieth century and remain fundamentally valid today. The feel of the differential calculus, as well as non-euclidean and four-dimensional geometries, which he conveyed to me at that time shaped the future interests and orientations of my life, and became the foundation of my whole work.

My observations and theoretical studies of life and mathematics, mathematical foundations, many branches of sciences, also history, history of cultures, anthropology, ‘philosophy’, ‘psychology’, ‘logic’, comparative religions, etc., convinced me that:

Human evaluations with reference to themselves were mythological or zoological, or a combination of both; but,
1) Neither of these approaches could give us a workable base for understanding the living, uniquely human, extremely complex (deeply inter-related) reactions of Smith1, Smith2, etc., generalized in such high-order abstractions as ‘mind’, or ‘intellect’; and,
2) A functional analysis, free from the old mythological and zoological assumptions, showed that humans, with the most highly developed nervous system, are uniquely characterized by the capacity of an individual or a generation to begin where the former left off. I called this essential capacity ‘time-binding’.
This can be accomplished only by a class of life which uses symbols as means for time-binding. Such a capacity depends on and necessitates ‘intelligence’, means of communication, etc. On this inherently human level of interdependence time-binding leads inevitably to feelings of responsibility, duty toward others and the future, and therefore to some type of ethics, morals, and similar social and/or socio-cultural reactions.

In the time-binding orientation I took those characteristics for granted as the empirical end-products of the functioning of the healthy human nervous system.

It was a fundamental error of the old evaluations to postulate ‘human nature’ as ‘evil’. ‘Human nature’ depends to a large extent on the character of our creeds or rationalizations, etc., for these ultimately build up our socio-cultural and other environments.

I believe that our approaches to the problems of humans have been vitiated by primitive methods of evaluation which still often dominate our attitudes and outlooks. With a time-binding consciousness, our criteria of values, and so behaviour, are based on the study of human potentialities, not on statistical averages on the level of homo homini lupus drawn from primitive and/or un-sane semantic (evaluational) reactions which are on record. Instead of studying elementalistic ‘thinking’, ‘feeling’, ‘intellect, ‘emotion’, etc., a misguiding approach implying the inherited archaic, artificial, divisions or schizophrenic splits of human characteristics which actually cannot be split, I investigated functionally and therefore non-elementalistically the psycho-biological mechanisms of time-binding—how they work.

By induction we pass from particulars to the general.

However, this method is not reliable enough. We have to build a deductive system and verify empirically whether the general applies to the eventual random particular, which then would become the foundation for predictability. This, after all, is the main aim of all science. So far what we ‘knew’ about ‘man’ were statistical averages gathered inductively, and so our human world picture was rather sad, distorted, if not hopeless. The human understanding of time-binding as explained here establishes the deductive grounds for a full-fledged ‘science of man’, where both inductive and deductive methods are utilized. I believe that this very point of inductive and deductive scientific methods with regard to humans tangibly marks a sharp difference between the childhood and the manhood of humanity. In other words, we try to learn from the study of the individual the main characteristics of the phylum (the human race). Now with the time-binding theory, for the first time to my knowledge, having accumulated data by induction (statistical averages), we can start with what we have learned about the phylum and analyze the individual from the point of view of human potentialities as a phylum. I may be wrong, but perhaps this may become the turning of a page of human history.

I could not use, in my further studies, the older ‘organism-as-a-whole’ approaches, but had to base my analysis on the much more complex ‘organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment’.

I had to include neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic (evaluational) environments as environments, and also had to consider geographic, physico-chemical, economic, political, ecological, socio-cultural, etc., conditions as factors which mould human personalities, and so even group behaviour. This statement is entirely general, and applies to highly civilized people as well as the most primitive.

Common sense and ordinary observations convinced me that the average, so-called ‘normal person’ is so extremely complex as to practically evade an over-all analysis. So I had to concentrate on the study of two extremes of human psycho-logical reactions: a) reactions at their best, because of their exceptional predictability, as in mathematics, the foundations of mathematics, mathematical physics, exact sciences, etc., which exhibit the deepest kind of strictly human psycho-logical reactions, and b) reactions at their worst, as exemplified by psychiatric cases. In these investigations I discovered that physico-mathematical methods have application to our daily life on all levels, linking science with problems of sanity, in the sense of adjustment to ‘facts’ and ‘reality’.

I found that human reactions within these two limits do not differ in some objectified ‘kind’, but only in psycho-biological ‘degrees’, and that the ‘normal’ person hovers somewhere in between the two extremes.

Nobody is as ‘insane’ as the composite picture a textbook of psychiatry would give us, and nobody is as sane as that which a textbook of sanity would give, the author included. The mechanisms of time-binding are exhibited in most humans except those with severe psycho-biological illnesses. However, some inaccessible dogmatists in power, particularly dictators of every kind, have blocked this capacity considerably. Clearly police states of secrecy, withholding from the people knowledge of, and from, the world, or twisting that knowledge to suit their purposes, ‘iron curtains’, etc., must be classified as saboteurs among time-binders, and certainly not a socio-cultural asset to the evolution of humanity.

Linguistic and grammatical structures also have prevented our understanding of human reactions. For instance, we used and still use a terminology of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, both extremely confusing, as the so-called ‘objective’ must be considered a construct made by our nervous system, and what we call ‘subjective’ may also be considered ‘objective’ for the same reasons.

My analysis showed that happenings in the world outside our skins, and also such organismal psychological reactions inside our skins as those we label ‘feelings’, ‘thinking’, ‘emotions’, ‘love’, ‘hate’, ‘happiness’, ‘unhappiness’, ‘anger’, ‘fear, ‘resentment’, ‘pain’, ‘pleasure’, etc., occur only on the non-verbal, or what I call silent levels. Our speaking occurs on the verbal levels, and we can speak about, but not on, the silent or un-speakable levels. This sharp, and inherently natural, yet thoroughly unorthodox differentiation between verbal and non-verbal levels automatically eliminates the useless metaphysical verbal bickerings of millenniums about ‘the nature of things’, ‘human nature’, etc. For many metaphysical verbal futile arguments, such as solipsism, or ‘the unknowable’, have been the result of the identifications of verbal levels with the silent levels of happenings, ‘feelings’, etc., that the words are merely supposed to represent, never being the ‘reality’ behind them.

Such psycho-logical manifestations as those mentioned above can be dealt with in a unified terminology of evaluation, with the result that an empirical general theory of values, or general semantics, becomes possible, and, with its roots in the methods of exact sciences, this can become the foundation of a science of man. For through the study of exact sciences we can discover factors of sanity. Different philosophical trends as found in disciplines such as Nominalism, Realism, Phenomenalism, Significs, Semiotic, Logical Positivism, etc., also become unified by a methodology, with internationally applicable techniques, which I call ‘non-aristotelian’, as it includes, yet goes beyond and brings up to date, the aims and formulations of Aristotle.

Whatever we may say something is, obviously is not the ‘something’ on the silent levels. Indeed, as Wittgenstein wrote, ‘What can be shown, cannot be said.’ In my experience I found that it is practically impossible to convey the differentiation of silent (unspeakable) levels from the verbal without having the reader or the hearer pinch with one hand the finger of the other hand. He would then realize organismally that the first-order psycho-logical direct experiences are not verbal. The simplicity of this statement is misleading, unless we become aware of its implications, as in our living reactions most of us identify in value the two entirely different levels, with often disastrous consequences. Note the sadness of the beautiful passage of Eddington on page lv. He seems to be unhappy that the silent levels can never be the verbal levels. Is this not an example of unjustified ‘maximum expectation’?

I firmly believe that the consciousness of the differences between these levels of abstractions; i.e., the silent and the verbal levels, is the key and perhaps the first step for the solution of human problems. This belief is based on my own observations, and studies of the endless observations of other investigators.

There is a tremendous difference between ‘thinking’ in verbal terms, and ‘contemplating’, inwardly silent, on non-verbal levels, and then searching for the proper structure of language to fit the supposedly discovered structure of the silent processes that modern science tries to find. If we ‘think’ verbally, we act as biased observers and project onto the silent levels the structure of the language we use, and so remain in our rut of old orientations, making keen, unbiased, observations and creative work well-nigh impossible. In contrast, when we ‘think’ without words, or in pictures (which involve structure and therefore relations), we may discover new aspects and relations on silent levels, and so may produce important theoretical results in the general search for a similarity of structure between the two levels, silent and verbal. Practically all important advances are made that way.

So far the only possible link between the two levels is found in terms of relations, which apply equally to both non-verbal and verbal levels, such as ‘order’ (serial, linear, cyclic, spiral, etc.), ‘between-ness’, ‘space-time’, ‘equality’ or ‘inequality’, ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘more than’, ‘less than’, etc. Relations, as factors of structure, give the sole content of all human knowledge.

It has been said that ‘to know anything we have to know everything.’ Unfortunately it is true, but expressed in the above form ‘knowledge’ would be impossible. Mathematicians solved this impasse simply and effectively. They introduced postulational methods, thus limiting the ‘everything’, out of which the limited ‘anything’ follows.

The identification (confusion) of verbal with silent levels leads automatically to the asking of indefinitely long arrays of verbal ‘why’s’, as if the verbal levels could ever possibly cover all the factors and chains of antecedents of the silent levels, or ever ‘be’ the silent levels. This is why in science we limit our ‘why’ to the data at hand, thus avoiding the unlimited metaphysical questioning without data, to which there cannot be an answer. Mathematicians solved these inherent dilemmas by stating explicitly their undefined terms in their postulational systems, terms which label nothing but occurrences on the silent levels. Metaphysicians of many kinds or many creeds since time immemorial tried to solve the same perplexities by postulating different ‘prime movers’ or ‘final causes’, beyond which the further ‘why’ is ruled out as leading to the logically ‘verboten’ ‘infinite regress’. Originally religions were polytheistic. Later, in the attempt for unification, perhaps to strengthen the power of the priesthood, and also because of the increasing ability of humans to make generalizations, monotheisms were invented, which have led to the most cruel religious wars. Different rulers, dictators, ‘fuehrers’, etc., have followed similar psycho-logical patterns with historically known destructive or constructive results. The above statements are limited by the historical contexts.

In our human evolutionary development the structures of religions and sciences, because all man-made, do not differ psycho-logically. They all depend on fundamental assumptions, hypotheses, etc., from which we try to build some understanding of, and/or rapport with, this world, ourselves included. Some of these involve archaic and false-to-fact assumptions, etc., others, such as sciences, involve modern, potentially verifiable, assumptions and hypotheses. In brief, any religion may be considered ‘primitive science’ to satisfy human unconscious organismal longings; and modern science may be considered ‘up-to-date religion’, to satisfy consciously the same human feelings. If we are supposed not to separate elementalistically ‘emotion’ and ‘intellect’, we have to take into consideration organismal longings spread over continents for millenniums, which find their proper expression according to the date of the specific human developments, at a date. Religions and sciences are both expressions of our human search for security, and so predictability, for solace, guidance, feelings of ‘belonging’, etc., culminating in self-realization through a general ‘consciousness of abstracting’, the main aim of my work.

The progress of modern science, including the new science of man as a time-binder, has been due uniquely to the freedom of scientists to revise their fundamental assumptions, terminologies, undefined terms, which involve hidden assumptions, etc., underlying our reflections, a freedom prohibited in ‘primitive sciences’ and also in dictatorships, past and present.

As to the space-time problem of the ‘beginning and the end of the world’, I have ‘solved’ it for myself effectively by the conviction that we are not yet evolved enough and so mature enough as humans to be able to understand such problems at this date. In scientific practice, however, I would go on, in search for structure, asking ‘why’ under consciously limited conditions. Probably in the future this problem will be shown to be no problem, and the solution will be found in the disappearance of the problem. By now science has already solved many dilemmas which at first seemed insoluble, as exemplified, for instance, in the new quantum mechanics.

Another important point which clarifies the problem of the ‘unknowable’, religions, etc., is that we humans have a capacity for inferential knowledge, which is not based on sense data, but on inferences from observed happenings. All modern sciences on the submicroscopic, electro-colloidal, etc., levels are of this ‘as if’ character. In fact, inferential knowledge today leads to testing in unexpected fields, and so is very creative. Epistemologically the fundamental theories must develop in converging lines of investigation, and if they do not converge it is an indication that there are flaws in the theories, and they are revised. Inferential knowledge today in science is much more reliable than sense data, which often deceive us. In religions we also translate the still unknown into inferentially ‘known’, which become creeds, but based on primitive or prescientific assumptions. The most primitive religion in which the savage believes, or the more generalized and more organized religions in which the ‘man in the street’ believes, represent non-elementalistically his inferential ‘knowledge’, which involves his ‘feelings’, wishes, desires, needs, fears, and what not, as combined inseparably in living reactions with his ‘intellect’.

I firmly believe that the still prevailing archaic, split, schizophrenic orientations about ourselves, which without a modern science of man are practically impossible to avoid, are an extremely hampering influence to any understanding of the potentialities of ‘human nature’. These outlooks, inherited from the ‘childhood of humanity’ and perpetuated linguistically, keep our human reactions and so our cultures on unnecessarily low levels, from which we try to extricate ourselves through violence, murder, rioting, and in larger expressions of mass sufferings, through revolutions and wars. This is in sharp contrast to the peaceful progress we have in science, where we are free to analyze our basic assumptions, and where we use a language of appropriate structure.

I firmly believe that an adequate structure of language is fundamental for human adjustment to the silent levels of happenings, ‘feelings’, etc. Thus, the non-elementalistic Einstein-Minkowski space-time, instead of the split, elementalistic newtonian ‘space’ and ‘time’, revolutionized physics. The non-elementalistic psycho-biology of Adolf Meyer, instead of ‘psychology’ and ‘biology’, marks the sharp difference between humans and animals. Non-elementalistic psycho-somatic considerations, instead of the older ‘psyche’ and ‘soma’, revolutionized the whole of medicine and rescued it from being merely glorified veterinary science. Etc., etc. I give these specific examples to indicate the general practical value of structural linguistic innovations which express and convey to others our new structural outlooks.

I am deeply convinced by theoretical considerations and empirical data that the new (historically the first to my knowledge) formulation of time-binding throws enormous light on our understanding of ‘human nature’, and will help to formulate new perspectives for the future of time-binders. This new functional definition of humans as time-binders, not mere ‘space-binders’, carries very far-reaching scientific, psycho-logical, moral and ethical beneficial consequences, which often remain lasting, today verified in many thousands of instances. It explains also how we humans, and humans alone, were able to produce sciences and civilizations, making us by necessity interdependent, and the builders of our own destinies.

All through history man has been groping to find his place in the hierarchy of life, to discover, so to say, his rôle in the ‘nature of things’. To this end he must first discover himself and his ‘essential nature’, before he can fully realize himself—then perhaps our civilizations will pass by peaceful evolutions from their childhood to the manhood of humanity.

It is a source of deep satisfaction to me that similar notions about the circularity and self-reflexiveness of human knowledge are taking root in our orientations as expressed by other writers. In 1942 in Monograph III published by the Institute of General Semantics, in my foreword with M. Kendig, we wrote:

‘It should be noticed that in human life self-reflexiveness has even "material" implications, which introduce serious difficulties. Professor Cassius J. Keyser expresses this very aptly: "It is obvious, once the fact is pointed out, that the character of human history, the character of human conduct, and the character of all our human institutions depend both upon what man is and in equal or greater measure upon what we humans think man is." This is profoundly true.

‘Professor Arthur S. Eddington describes the same problem in these words: "And yet, in regard to the nature of things, this knowledge is only an empty shell—a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness. Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. And, moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature.

‘ “We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own.”

‘Dr. Alexis Carrel formulated the same difficulty differently, but just as aptly: “To progress again man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor.”’

Those self-reflexive and circular mechanisms are the uniquely human types of reaction which made our human achievements possible. With the new formulations, the consciousness of this special capacity with its profound implications has become generally teachable on all levels, that of uneducated people and children included, and this consciousness may now mark a new period in our evolution.

History, anthropology, and general semantics establish firmly that the enormous majority of humanity so far lived and live on the animal biological level of mere subsistence, without the opportunity to realize their potentialities. For time-binders are not merely biological organisms, but psycho-biological, and this introduces incredible complexities, which so far we did not know how to handle. The old notions about ‘man’ have hitherto led to a generally sick and bewildered society. We cannot be psycho-logical isolationists and try to be constructive time-binders, or we are bound to be bogged down in an asocial morass of conflicts.

The theory of time-binding and extensional methods of general semantics have been tested in many scientific, educational and managerial fields. Even on the battlefields of World War II they were applied by American physicians, officers and men in thousands of cases of ‘battle fatigue’, with telling results. Today the new methods are taught in many schools and universities, and there are study groups on all continents.

To conclude, I may quote from my new preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity: ‘We need not blind ourselves with the old dogma that "human nature cannot be changed", for we find that it can be changed [if we know how]. We must begin to realize our potentialities as humans, then we may approach the future with some hope. We may feel with Galileo, as he stamped his foot on the ground after recanting the Copernican theory before the Holy Inquisition, “Eppur si muove!” The evolution of our human development may be retarded, but it cannot be stopped.’

Alfred Korzybski

Lakeville, Connecticut, U. S. A.
April 1949

Bibliographical Note

The time-binding theory was first propounded in my Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1921, second edition, with additions, to be published in 1950 by International Non-aristotelian Library Publishing Company, Institute of General Semantics, Distributors. It was further elaborated in my ‘Fate and Freedom’, Mathematics Teacher, May 1923, reprinted in The Language of Wisdom and Folly by Irving J. Lee, Harper, New York, 1949, ‘The Brotherhood of Doctrines’, The Builder, April 1924, in my papers read before the International Mathematical Congress in Toronto in 1924, before the Washington Society for Nervous and Mental Diseases in 1925, and before the Washington Psychopathic Society in 1926, when I was studying at St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital in Washington, D.C. It culminated, after extensive studies of the mechanisms of time-binding, in Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, The International Non-aristotelian Library Publishing Company, first published in 1933, second edition 1941, third edition 1948, distributed by the Institute of General Semantics. In this book, with a physico-mathematical approach, I introduced for the first time the new appropriate scientific methodology for the time-binding theory, which I called ‘extensional method’, with principles of essential simplicity.

posted in General Semantics - 2 replies

How to Introduce General Semantics into Common Usage?

2005-03-08T18:20:40Z

(1) Deconditioning a major obstacle?
(2) Introduce the form before "is" has become a conditioned reflex?
(3) The "mechanics" of language for you were established when?
(4) Applying the learning cycle of "New, Boring, Without Effort"?

posted in General Semantics - 0 replies