Why
General Semantics, properly applied, will save the world:
WHAT
I BELIEVE
Alfred
Korzybski
Author of Manhood of Humanity and Science and Sanity
Paper from
Manhood of Humanity, 2nd edition 1950
© I.G.S. Englewood, New-Jersey
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#~#~#
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:
1. Human
evaluations with reference to themselves were mythological or
zoological, or a combination of both; but,
2. 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,
3. 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 overall 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 psycho-logical 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. 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 sit lent 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 pre-scientific
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 role 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.
A. K.
* 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.
