>Date: Mon, 9 Oct 95 16:37:54 -0700
>From: mcpherso (John McPherson)
>To: ssread-l@newciv.org
>Subject: SSREAD: On preface to 3rd edition
>Cc: solan@math.uio.no
>Reply-To: ssread-l@newciv.org

   Carmen asked me to deliver to the group my abstractions from 
Korzybski's Preface to the 3rd Edition of S&S, and as this seemed
an agreeable (and short :-) enterprise, I was happy to do it.
Please keep in mind, however, that I'm not actually reading S&S
along with y'all, but I am interested in your discussions on it.

   Rather than just presenting a "summary" of the preface, I will try
to clarify what I think K meant and of course I'll include my reactions
to it ;-)

   Korzybski wrote this preface about 2-3 years before he died, and
about 2 years after World War II.  From these two facts, one might
expect that 'thoughts' about the War would be very present in K's mind,
and that this preface might represent something like K's culminating
assessment of the effect of his magnum opus.  (Also in this connection
see his "Author's Note" to the _Selections from Science and Sanity_,
Feb. 1948, and his essay "What I Believe", April 1949)


   My abstractions from/about the preface:
   =======================================
   1. K's opinion was that despite many scientific discoveries since 1933,
there were no changes in fundamental methodology, so he thought no revision
of S&S was needed.
[Though I might suggest that a major editorial revision couldn't hurt ;-)]

   2. He mentioned two congresses on g.s. (along with a compilation of
papers on applications of g.s.), the formation of g.s. study groups and the
continued existence of IGS.  K took all this as evidence for the need for the
new non-aristotelian methods.  [...or at least "interest" in them ...]

   3. "Experience show that when the methods [...] are applied, the results
are usually beneficial [...] If they are [...] merely talked about, no results
can be expected."  K apparently maintained this for applications in all areas
at all levels, but offered as his main example the testimony of a former
Lt. Col. regarding the application of g.s. during WWII by medical/psychiatric
personnel and their battlefield patients (over 7000 cases).
[Actually, I've found that even just being aware of the formulations can 
help even when I don't actively "apply" the methods, so I disagree somewhat
with K's quoted statement, which seems to be an example of 'allness'.]

   4. K then affirmed that this work originated with his non-elementalistic
(or "wholistic") functional definition of humans: that they can perform
"time-binding", ie, each 'generation' can start where the previous one
left off (via recorded symbolic-communications).  This wholistic function 
subsumes 'intellectual', 'emotional', 'intuitive' and other reactions.  By 
this new definition, K denied previous conceptions of humans (eg, 
'zoological', 'mythological', 'racial', 'animalistic', 'biological') and 
what he thought was their associated "moralities" ... and substituted one 
of his own: a time-binding socio-cultural "responsibility" which he thought 
would lead to "a new period of human development".  [Note: I find K's notion
of time-binding, as I understand it, a little naive.  At each date there 
seem to be conflicting/competing doctrines/interpretations, so the "body of 
inherited knowledge" is by no means monolithic; there is no necessary 
guarantee that time-bound 'knowledge' is associated with "progress"; and 
the amount of work required to "catch up" seems to be so great that we tend
to become ever more specialized ... and consequently may lose sight of and
forget significant developments in the past and in other fields.  I'm also
suspicious when someone introduces some new "responsibility", "obligation",
"morality", etc.  Much more on this later in the book :-)]

   5. His notion of "a new stage of development" seems to have been inspired
by the work of Spengler (and I also see a parallel with Comte) who conceived
of "humanity" as analogous to a kind of giant organism ... which K posited was 
still in 'its' "childhood".  K noted that S himself was still in this 
"childhood" with its "pathological" doctrines, and that the national socialists
adopted his conception [the State as the primary organism to which mere 
individuals were to be subjugated].  K pointed out that most politicians (1948)
still subscribed to those doctrines, but he didn't elaborate (in this preface) 
on the range of these doctrines and why he apparently thought they _all_
were pathological.

   6. K pointed out (perhaps to demonstrate that he wasn't a "racist" :-)
that at least some of science originated with "Asiatic influences", and then
was picked up and developed in Europe.  At a certain stage in its development,
physico-mathematical methods were developed which incorporated some
"factors of sanity" [perhaps the practices of variable-indexing, time-dependent
equations, and the method of differential calculus], which K claims
to have incorporated in his non-aristotelian system, his foundation for a
"science of man".

   7. K then claimed that anthropologists have found that 'civilizations'
develop socio-culturally if the individuals in them are capable of forming
ever-higher abstractions, and K asserted that if they can develop a general
consciousness of this abstracting then they will have found a key to further
'human' evolution.  The key seems to be the ability to break through current
abstractions (eg, "traditions") and not to get stuck in them when 'we' are
capable of moving forward a "step".  I certainly agree with this on the
level of individual ability and choices, but I have to wonder at his 
continual concern with the whole collective.  I see 'civilization', 'society',
'humanity', etc. as emergent and fluid systems resulting from the choices and
actions of individuals.  Assist individuals to evaluate more effectively and
interact with each other more harmoniously, and the emergent 'collective'
will take care of 'itself'.
 
   8. The current abstractions of a 'culture' are usually coded into a system,
probably because that makes them easier to teach/learn.  Aristotle did this
with "the laws of thought" (ie, 2-valued either-or logic) 2500 years ago, and
it was very successful, so successful that K was baffled by the fact that
nearly everyone uses it.  K rationalized this by claiming that on the "gross"
level we "really" do deal with "two-valued" states much of the time, and then
he gives a series of examples ... nearly every one of which I think can be 
expanded into more-than-two states :-) ... but I see his point.  His next point
is that the A-system asserts such either-or sharpness that it leads to
overly-strong notions of "kinds", "categories", "classes", etc., which don't
exist as such in reality (note that this effect is nicely dramatized by the
list of "opposites" that K just presented :-), and that we need a fuzzier, 
more flexible system (of verbal mapping).

   9. K then jumped to a new topic: the confusion over the terms "semantics"
and "general semantics", which he asserts really have nothing to do with
each other.  'Semantics' (a branch of philology) has no application to life
problems; 'significs' (developed by Lady Welby) is closer to life, but offers
no techniques for application ("is unworkable"); and other seemingly-related
fields, such as 'semiotic' and 'semasiology', are all separate from g.s.

   10. In this connection, K almost casually mentioned that a "theory of 
'meaning' is impossible".  Skipping forward (to pages 20-21 in the 4th ed.),
one can see that the issue is a bit more complex than this dismissal might
imply (we can't directly experience each others abstractions, so we must
use definitions to communicate "meanings", but the definitions are also 
composed of words which have to be "defined", so we either go in circles
or get down to a set of 'undefined terms' which we simply just have to 
"know" what they refer to and which can't be stated.)

   11.  General semantics (which K formerly called by the somewhat ominous-
sounding name "human engineering") is supposed to be the set of working
tools for K's proposed non-aristotelian system, his "science of man" or
"theory of values and evaluation".  It allows us to relate verbal structures
(ie, indexed, dated, conditional statements) to non-verbal structures on the
"level" that we actually live life on.  It does so by giving us specific tools
(the "extensional devices") to alter the structure of the language we use
in order to bring it into accord with the facts of reality as we observe them.
K claimed that g.s. is thus an empirical science of evaluation which takes into
account the reactions of individuals and their "surrounding" (absorbed)
'culture' (which he refered to as their "neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic
environments").  [Note: It seems to me that K's formulation of g.s. emphasizes
"describing accurately" and "reacting appropriately" rather than "creating"
and "being proactive".  Also, I personally find the notion of a "semantic
environment" to be a little misleading and not specifically-localized enough,
but that topic will pop up later in the book.]

   12. K then asserted that human progress and problems increase
exponentially, and then he hinted that the problems can't be solved unless
we adopt his functional definition of humans and his extensional methods ...
[Note: in many situations, it is not an _exponential_ curve that most
accurately describes it, but a logistic growth curve (grows rapidly at first,
then slows down and tapers off to a new level).  This was pointed out by
researchers who became disillusioned with Paul Ehrlich's "chicken little"
prognostications, and by such researchers as Julian Simon who have rejected
the old Malthusian false-to-facts model of "ever-increasing scarcity".  Also,
"problems" and "progress" seem to be intimately linked, so they are
co-functioning aspects, two sides of the same coin.]  K then made a 
to-me-dubious leap in his praise of UNESCO as something like the potential
savior of humankind ... but these considerations deal more with K's motivations
and speculations rather than with g.s. proper.

   13. Finally, he wrapped up with a paragraph that seems highly consistent
with his original name of g.s. ("Human Engineering"), that human nature can
(and "must") be changed ... and he hints that if we don't, there is no "hope"
for 'us' ... but frankly I just don't buy into that whole point of view (ie, 
I think we have more than just two options to consider ;-).

--
John McPherson (mcpherso@lumina.ucsd.edu)
  * Host, General Semantics mailing list
    (send posts to gs@lumina.ucsd.edu, admin to gs-request@lumina.ucsd.edu)
    ftp://lumina.ucsd.edu/pub/.../gs_dir/000_gs.html
"General semantics ... an idea whose time was bound (to come ;-)."

 ============================================================================

>Date: 10 Oct 95 08:09:50 EDT
>From: "Milton L. Dawes" <102362.1465@compuserve.com>
>To: John McPherson <mcpherso>
>Subject: SSREAD: On preface to 3rd edition

Hi John 

Re application of formulations. I interpret  "apply" to include awareness. If
say at the instant that I am about to disagree with someone I become aware that
I may have misinterpreted their statement: so I wait to hear more. That
qualifies for me as an application. By the way,. that instant is an example of
what I call a Wedge of Consciousness or WOC.

 =============================================================================

>Subject: For John:  On Application
>To: PacBell.COM!newciv.org!ssread-l
>Date: Tue, 10 Oct 95 9:15:15 PDT
>From: "Dan'l DanehyOakes" <djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM>

John, you wrote:
>    3. "Experience show that when the methods [...] are applied, the results
> are usually beneficial [...] If they are [...] merely talked about, no results
> can be expected."  K apparently maintained this for applications in all areas
> at all levels, but offered as his main example the testimony of a former
> Lt. Col. regarding the application of g.s. during WWII by medical/psychiatric
> personnel and their battlefield patients (over 7000 cases).
> [Actually, I've found that even just being aware of the formulations can 
> help even when I don't actively "apply" the methods, so I disagree somewhat
> with K's quoted statement, which seems to be an example of 'allness'.]

That may be the case; or it may be that you are using a too-limited "mental"
meaning of the words "apply", "application",.  

I would suggest that "just being aware of the formulations" in a way that "can
help" constitutes a way of applying, albeit perhaps the most passive and
simplest way of applying, a set of ideas/formulations/concepts/teachings/etc.
Thus, if Korzybski "maintained this for applications. . . at all levels," (your 
quote and not, so far as I can tell, K's) then the phenomenon of "helping" you 
describe fits under his general statement about the necessity of applying to
produce results.

Indeed, Tom Lehrer's dogma about life ("Life is like a sewer -- what you get 
out of it depends on what you put into it") seems applicable here, in that,
_any_ amount of practice in GS principles, even simply reading *AND "THINKING"
ABOUT* them, will produce _some_ results, but the more actively you put them
into practice, the more noticeable the results you will obtain.

(Note that I did not say "benefit," but "results."  I remain unconvinced that
"all" GS principles, when put into practice,  yield "only" beneficial results.)

--dan'l