Now that we are able to stand a little apart from historical developments and view his life’s work in some perspective, it can hardly be doubted that he grasped, as few had done before him and certainly none had so systematically and comprehensively treated, the abiding significance of linguistic habits and the communicative processes-in-general to all of Man’s thinking-and-doing, from his loftiest metaphysical, epistemological and mathematical efforts to the most casual, trivial and mundane performances of his everyday living.

...Korzybski’s position was wholly comparable to that of Copernicus and Galileo, who had been impelled by their private inquiries during the Renaissance to challenge the popular ptolemaic cosmology and Aristotelian mechanics of their day. It required an uncommon personal integrity, an unusual brand of courage and a plenum of physical energy to spell out the overt and covert effects produced by these widely-pervading, pathologic neuro-semantic processes in the community of humans. Korzybski was, as we now know, quite up to this formidable task.(2)

Kurt Mendelssohn, in The Quest For Absolute Zero (wherein he repeatedly notes the formulational and relative character of ‘absolute zero’ even if and even when ‘it’ should be achieved) describes some of the preferences of Planck the man which inevitably affected the formulating and on-going semantic reactions of Planck as scientist:

The great success of the quantum theory which was demonstrated by Einstein’s and Bohr’s work at first over-shadowed the emptiness of the quantum concept as such. Only Planck himself remained reticent and cautious, realizing from the beginning that his great theory was sadly incomplete. As he saw it, there were two ways out of the dilemma: either the quantum concept was a mathematical oddity or it must have a deep physical meaning. For a long time he favored the first alternative. [Italics mine: R. P. P.] His strong feeling that the laws of nature must be ‘absolute’, required relations between physical quantities which should be free from ambiguity... He much disliked Boltzmann’s statistical approach because, to his way of thinking, it debased the simple grandeur of thermodynamic quantities by having them interpreted in terms of probability. In his search for the correct radiation formula it had been a severe blow first to realize that only the statistical approach would lead to the truth.... Even before his first paper on the radiation formula was published, Planck had tried, though unsuccessfully, to remove the quantum concept from this work. His main reason for failing to champion his theory during the years after the first publication and for ignoring Einstein’s work on it, was the hope that he would find the way back to the continuity of classical physics. (3)

Planck was a notoriously cautious man who, when asked a question by one of his research students would invariably reply: ‘I will give you my answer tomorrow’. However, he knew no caution where the laws of thermodynamics were concerned, since he considered them as certainty. (4)

Einstein not only felt uncomfortable with what he called “... this Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizing philosophy,” (6) he opposed it vigorously. Failing to make his case in 1927, he returned to the attack at the Sixth Solvay Congress in 1930 where he nearly ‘won’ but was again ‘defeated’ by Bohr and had to ‘retreat’, conceding that Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy was valid, but maintained his objection to the notion that it was complete.

For the rest of his life Einstein searched for ways to overthrow the uncertainty principle. Banesh Hoffman points to “... his instinctive dislike of the idea of a probabilistic universe in which the behavior of individual atoms depends on chance.” (7)

Einstein summed up his intuitive feeling about the quantum theory in the picturesque phrase “Gott würfelt nicht,” which he used in various forms on many occasions. It can be ploddingly translatcd “God does not play dice.” (8)

These psycho-formulational points made here are not intended as an attempt to in any way minimize the achievements of the great men being discussed (how presumptuous that would be!); but precisely these semantic reactive aspects not ordinarily mentioned in discourse about scientific issues are what I want to stress later with relation to Korzybski’s response to Heisenberg.

Leon Brillouin, in his instructive and curiously (for me) inspiring book, Scientific Uncertainty, and Information, makes some cogent remarks about the psychol-ogics of scientific laws. We need them here:

... what is the actual value of laws and theories, and why do we assign so much worth to their discovery?

We may risk a new suggestion here: the importance of scientific laws may very well be due to a human factor. Our minds like to deal with theories and general laws, rather than large accumulations of unconnected data, which we find hard to memorize. The satisfaction of discovering a general scientific law corresponds to the personal pleasure of the scientist....

When we speak of value, pleasure, or satisfaction, we definitely introduce the human element....

Scientific laws have a special value for the human scientist, but they are human also in another respect: these laws are discovered by human minds; they are invented by human imagination. (9)

A.The physical theory may be construed as a discovery made by the human mind. It goes further than the empirical results and it seems to represent an additional amount of information, an actual creation of negentropy by human thinking.

B. The physical theory can also be considered as a work of imagination, something like a piece of poetry. It adds a great deal to the original information; some of these additions may be valuable and some of them may have no value. This point of view was presented by some very famous scientists and philosophers. (10)

... the human mind... delights in concepts of symmetry.... (12)

The formulation and propagation of the Uncertainty Principle (Unbestimmtheit: uncertainty or indeterminacy) by a group of workers at the vanguard of physics (and, therefore, the vanguard of what we may call ‘hard’ human knowledge) set the scientific world on its collective auditory cortex. Few could ‘believe their ears’. The shock value of Heisenberg’s (and Bohr’s and Born’s) formulation was comparable to the ‘jolt of observation’ on an atomic ‘particle’ -- the scale was, however, cosmic rather than merely sub-microscopic; this paper itself is just one of a steadily increasing wave of reverberations: brains set oscillating through time-binding.

Here are some ‘ear-witness’ accounts, a series of historically significant semantic reactions:

The principle of uncertainty... shook us all a good deal. After all, it said that nature could not be described as a rigid mechanism of causes and effects... all the successes of science, Newton’s successes and those of the nineteenth century, seemed to have been won hitherto by fitting nature with just this kind of machine. To say suddenly that at the bottom those causal chains are not true, that the whole thing cannot be done -- that seemed a strange discovery, and a disagreeable one. (14)

This picture of an objective real world around us is what we have inherited from the Greeks, and we must get rid of it through surgery of the mind, however cruel it may be. (15)

The great French thinker, Henri Poincaré, pointed out in his Science and Hypothesis (1905, p. 145) that every generalization presupposes a belief in the unity and simplicity of nature. But since that time, so much of a ‘revolutionary’ nature had appeared, -- Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is the most obvious that the faith in the orderliness of nature has been shaken. For example, Professor G. N. Lewis tells us that we have not the slightest idea of whether the belief in the simplicity of natural law (uniformity of nature) is due to the structure of the objective world, or to some hitherto unanalyzed trait of human psychology.

Can the acceptance of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle be used to justify indeterminism? And if this is so, can causality ever be restored to science and rest on a firm foundation? (16)

we [should] continually follow the example of Columbus, who possessed the courage to leave the known world in the almost insane hope of finding land again beyond the sea. (17)

... we must not forget that a high price had to be paid for this ... scientific concept of the universe. Progress in science has been bought at the expense of the possibility of making the phenomena of nature immediately and directly comprehensible to our way of thought. (18)

Whether we like it or not, these are the facts resulting from Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s famous discussions. (19)

Realistic thought places the subject before the predicate whereas experimentation in microphysics starts with predicates about predicates, with remote predicates, and then simply exerts itself to coordinate the various manifestations of a predicate. By converting the propositions, but in the muted form proper to non-Aristotelian logic which does not go so far as to postulate a subject in the absolute, one would obtain formulae less brutal in their opposition. (20)

The first thing I want to emphasize is that they were talking about almost nothing at all -- surely as close to ‘nothing at all’ as any humans before them had been able to speak with any degree of precision and with any degree of non-Alice in Wonderland respectability. It was perhaps this very ‘Alice’ quality of the proceedings that gave Planck and Einstein pause.

(Let me apologize to the readers of this journal for ‘carrying coals to Newcastle’ [or salt to Wicliczka] in repeating what they must know in their sleep. But since the uncertainty principle is at the heart of our discussion and since many who did not grow up in those planet-rattling days may be readers of this special issue, I dare to proceed.)

But this ‘nothing at all’ was quickly perceived to relate to everything in particular, and thus its still emerging impact.

To start with, Heisenberg saw his (and Einstein’s) activity as far less revolutionary than that of Kopernik (Copernicus):

Copernicus’s idea was much more an import from outside into the concepts of the science of his time, and therefore caused far more telling changes in science than the ideas of modern physics are creating today. (21)

Technically, the uncertainty formulation was necessitated by experiments in the mid-twenties in which attempts were being made to ‘observe’ the positions of individual ‘electrons’ (which even today many do not recognize as ‘only’ a convenient inference). Brillouin states the problem succinctly:

A new principle dominates physics now, the uncertainty principle, formulated by Bohr and Heisenberg. There is a limit to the accuracy of experimental measurements. The scientist seeks to increase, as far as possible, the accuracy of his obser-vations but he is always stopped by an unsurmountable obstacle: the perturbation brought by the measuring device itself to the object measured. In former classical theories, it was admissible to ignore the role of the observer: it was thought that the experimenter observed what was going on around him; his presence was not supposed to influence the course of events. In astronomy, or in classical mechanics, this point of view is defensible. But when we examine atoms or electrons, we cannot look at these tiny elements without disturbing them. The coupling between the observer and the observed cannot be ignored any more.

Let us try to sum up Bohr’s conceptions on the subject: electrons, protons, mesons, photons -- all these essential components of the material world cannot be considered as particles in the usual sense. We must conceive them as being between particles and waves. Our customary ideas, formed after the model of everyday life, [‘common sense’: R. P. P.] do not apply to these ultimate elements. Their nature surpasses our understanding. In certain experiments, a corpuscular description is sufficient, but in other cases, the wave representation presents itself more naturally and the quantum conditions join the two interpretations which looked contradictory at first sight.

If we use the model with particles, we have to give up describing their movements....

Absolute determinism does not apply any more. Physical laws take on an essentially statistical value, but do not apply to the detail of the movement. 22

But why should these considerations, even now seeming so precious and specialized, have created such an uproar? Because workers within and outside of the field of theoretical physics saw the implications for human thinking in general.

Heisenberg participated in extending the uncertainty implications beyond the laboratory:

We have to discuss whether the scientist will once and for all have to renounce all thought of an objective time scale common to all observers, and of objective events in time and space independent of observation on them. Perhaps recent developments [1934] represent only a passing crisis. I tend to the opinion, for which there seems to be the strongest evidence, that this renunciation will be final. 23

The hope that new experiments will yet lead us back to objective events in time and space, or to absolute time, are about as well founded as the hope of discovering the end of the world somewhere in the unexplored regions of the Antarctic. 24

... modern physics has purged classical physics of its arbitrary belief in its unlimited application. 25

... the edifice of exact science can hardly be looked upon as a consistent and coherent unit in the naive way we had hoped. 26

... we must also become reconciled to the idea that even the mathematically exact sections of physics represent, so to speak, only tentative efforts to find our way among the wealth of phenomena. This will obviously apply to modern as well as classical physics. For if certain ambiguities of the time concept have been remedied by relativity theory and certain ambiguities of the concept of matter by quantum theory, yet there can be no doubt that the future development of science will force further revisions and that the concepts used at present will also prove to be limited in their application, but in a sense as yet unknown. 27

Science no longer deals with the world of direct experience but with a dark background of this world brought to light by our experiments. But this means that, in a way, this objective world is a product of our active intervention, and improved techniques of observation. Here, too, then, we are brought face to face with the limitations of human understanding which we cannot overcome. 28

In 1940 Gaston Bachelard, very much concerned with generalizing Heisenberg, made some telling comments:

... an object statically localized by ordinary intuition is wrongly specified.

... contemporary science wishes to know phenomena and not things. It is in no way thing-conscious. A thing is merely an arrested phenomenon.

... we must think of objects as being essentially in movement and seek for the conditions under which they can be considered to be at rest, as if fixed in intuitive space; we must no longer conceive objects, as we used to do, as being naturally at rest -- as things used to be -- and seek out the conditions which permit them to move. 29

In his early Common Sense of Science, Jacob Bronowski also took, Heisenberg out of the laboratory:

Heisenberg showed that every [Italics mine: R. P. P.] description of nature contains some essential and irremovable uncertainty. ... We may have what metaphys-ical prejudice we choose, whether the future really and truly, essentially, is deter-mined by the present. But the physical fact about these small scale events is be-yond dispute. Their future cannot be foretold with complete assurance by anyone observing them in the present. And of course, once we have any uncertainty in pre-diction, in however small and distant a corner of the world, then the future is essentially uncertain -- although it may be overwhelmingly probable.

I have said that this principle of uncertainty refers to very small particles and events. But these small events are not by any means unimportant. They are just the sort of events which go on in the nerves and brain and in the giant molecules which determine the qualities we inherit. And sometimes the odd small events add up to a fantastic large one. 30

It was discovery, and it has had a profound effect. But it does not seem nearly so strange or unsettling now. On the contrary, to my generation the principle of uncertainty seems the most natural and sensible remark in the world. It does not seem to us to have taken the order out of science. It has taken out the metaphysics and left what had long been forgotten, the scientific purpose.

...

In order to act, it is not necessary to have a metaphysical belief that the rules by which we are acting are universal and that all other rules are just like them. On the contrary, at bottom all general beliefs of this kind are at odds with the principles of science.

...

There simply is no sense in asserting what would happen if we knew the present completely. We do not, and plainly we never can.

...

At bottom then, the principle of uncertainty states in special terms what was always known [sic!], which is this. Science is a way of describing realities; it is therefore limited by the limits of observation. Anything else is not scicnce, it is scholastics. 31

We cannot abstract ourselves from the world. We form, together with it, an inseparable whole. There are no actors and spectators but a mixed crowd. The modern scientist must absolutely renounce the idea of a real objective world. What science does is to supply us with representative models capable of imitating regularities (or laws) which we observe, and to enable us to reason about them. The models constitute the physical representation of the world, such as defined by Planck. Physical models are as different from the world as a geographical map is from the surface of the earth. 32

The observer-observed continuum as a source of uncertainty is frankly faced:

Observation and perturbation inevitably go together, and the world around us is in perpetual flux, because we observe it. [Italics mine: R. P. P.] 33

His most challenging statement is addressed to his fellow scientists:

Statistics, probabilities, and averages -- these are all we lnow from Einstein’s relations, and the situation is exactly similar for absorption and emission of radiation of any kind. ...

It is necessary to emphasize these fundamental facts because too many scientists still remain under the impression that all elementary laws should be similar to those of classical mechanics that are supposed to be strictly deterministic. This is not the case. Elementary physical laws are all expressed by statistical formulas. No exact prediction is possible (at least for the present) and everything is irreversible! 34

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has profound consequences, not only in physics but quite generally in philosophical considerations involving the question of determinism and free will. Any statement dealing with the dimensions of h [Planck’s constant] or less is merely metaphysical speculation and can never claim to have meaning as far as individual events are concerned.

The macroscopic laws of physics are fortunately saved by statistics since they always represent averages over large numbers of these individual events. 35

Modern physics has contributed two important notions to present day philosophy -- the relativity principle and the uncertainty principle. Together, these two notions pretty well annihilate hope of ever finding ‘absolutes’ of any kind testable by scientific methods. However, they originated in the midst of very rigorous systems of reasoning and on the basis of very accurate measurements of various kinds of events. They do not offer excuses for careless observation and sloppy reasoning. 36

What of Korzybski in all this? As already shown in the passages from Bachelard and Meyers, Korzybski met uncertainty head on -- in, I can’t resist saying it, no uncertain terms. More rigorously and vigorously than most others, he saw and accepted the broad implications of Heisenbergian uncertainty for the general community of humans, not just the scientific minority. In my view, Korzybski not only saw these implications more clearly than Heisenberg himself but, continuing our psycho-historical emphasis, accepted uncertainty more courageously and thoroughgoingly than did Heisenberg.

Korzybski’s major explicit published reactions to the uncertainty principle (formulated in 1925 and debated, as we have seen, in 1927 while Korzybski was working on the first draft of his magnum opus) appeared in Science and Sanity (1933). First of all, and this seems necessitated by the still heard criticism that Korzybski failed to give due recognition to his partners in formulation, Heisenberg is one of those to whom Science and Sanity is dedicated. Specifically, the dedication is to the works of those listed “... which have greatly influenced my enquiry ...”

Throughout Science and Sanity Korzybski uses passages from Heisenberg to introduce sections of his book and as chapter heads. 37 What most concerns us here is his semantic reaction to Heisenbergian stimulus. Korzybski distinguished two kinds of uncertainty: Heisenbergian (restricted) and Korzybskian (general). Here are some sample quotations that show Korzybski formulating the ‘restricted’ character of Heisenberg’s principle:

It was found that the ‘absolute’ division of the ‘observer’ and the ‘observed’ was false to facts, because every observation in this field disturbs the observed. The elimination of this elementalism in the quantum field led to the most revolutionary restricted ‘uncertainty principle’ of Heisenberg, which, without abolishing determinism, requires the transforming of the two-valued A ‘logic’ into the [infinite]-valued semantics of probability. 38

Under such conditions, the restricted ‘uncertainty principle’ of Heisenberg becomes a structural, most revolutionary and creative general principle ...[Of which more below: R. P. P.] 39

Heisenberg’s restricted principle of uncertainty is also the result of the application of non-elementalism, based on the observation that the ‘observer’ and the ‘observed’ cannot be sharply divided. 40

Because the nervous system is an abstracting, integrating mechanism, all human psycho-neurological reactions and, particularly, psycho-logical, to be similar in structure, must be based on the mathematical theories of statistics and probability. On the objective level we deal with absolute individuals, and so all statements or higher order abstractions, can only be probable. Historically, mathematicians have elaborated not only both theories, but Boole, in his Laws of Thought, extended the mathematical approach to ‘logic’ in connection with the theory of probability. Finally, the difficulties of the law of excluded third have been solved by Lukasiewicz and Tarski in their ‘many valued logic’ which, when N increases indefinitely, merges with the mathematical theory of probability, a result reached independently by a different type of analysis in the present system. Any possible future scientific [non-]A, non-el ‘logic’, which I call general semantics, must be built on this structurally more correct formulation....

Under such conditions, the restricted ‘uncertainty principle’ of Heisenberg becomes a ... general principle, ... 41

... the ‘law of identity’ is never applicable to processes. The ‘law of exeluded third’, as it is sometimes called, which gives the two-valued character to A ‘logic’, establishes, as a general principle, what represents only a limiting case and so, as a general principle, must be unsatisfactory. As on the objective, un-speakable levels, we deal exclusively with absolute individuals and individual situations, in the sense that they are not identical, all statements which, by necessity, represent higher order abstractions must only represent probable statements. Thus, we are led to [infinite]-valued semantics of probability, which introduces an inherent and general principle of uncertainty. 42

The present [non-]A-system was formulated in a way independent of other systems, as it was the direct result of structural semantic researches free from identification. This led to the formulation of fundamental general principles which underlie all human ‘knowledge’, such as non-identity, requiring the recognition of structure as the only possible content of ‘knowledge’ and so leading to the formulation of ‘similarity of structure’; non-elementalism as a general principle; the general principle of uncertainty; [infinite]-valued general semantics... It is naturally very reassuring to find that the newest most important achievements of science have followed these principles unconsciously and have applied them before they were explicitly formulated. 43

Korzybski explicitly relegates Heisenberg’s principle to the status of a ‘special case’ in two crucial passages:

This principle becomes a particular instance of the general principle of uncertainty, ... 44

... any positive statement about the objective levels must be only probable in different degrees, which introduces a fundamental and entirely general [non-]A principle of uncertainty. Heisenberg’s restricted principle in physics appears only as a special case. ... the older two-valued determinism must be reformulated into the [infinite]-valued determinism of the maximum probability. 45

We have already seen that many scientists, philosophers, etc., were disturbed by the uncertainty principle. Many looked to the then emerging three- (or multi-) valued logics as a linguistic prophylactic for uncertainty, especially since, at least in the case of Lukasiewicz, commitment to indeterminacy had preceded Heisenberg’s 1925-1927 formulations. (Lukasiewicz’s first paper on indeterminacy, which spawned his three-valued logic, was published in 1906):

Lukasiewicz ... claimed that the universally accepted conviction that nature is governed by causal necessity was ‘only a premature and unscientific formulation of the data of experience’. The indeterministic conviction so strongly expressed in this essay resulted perhaps from his scrutiny of the concept of cause. But it is equally feasible that his indeterministic outlook preceded the essay and gave rise to it. He defended his conviction with unswerving determination for the rest of his life. ... the origin of the three-valued logic was in a way a by-product of his defence. 46

The philosophical significance of a many-valued logic was assessed differently by different people. Lukasiewicz himself thought that his creation was comparable with the creation of non-Euclidean geometries. Some people, notably Reichenbach, saw in it a solution to difficulties in which modern physics found itself after Heisenberg stated the principle of uncertainty. 47

Not only has this situation given rise to much philosophical argument; even logic has been scrutinized to see if it offers a way out of the puzzle. For example, Hans Reichenbach has sought to interpret quantum mechanics in terms of a polyvalent logic, a probability logic with a continuous scale of values having ‘truth and falsity’ as limiting extremes. Those interested in keeping the record straight may wish to recall that Korzybski and the present writer (among others) have also explored the possibilities along this line. On the other hand, Bertrand Russell, Ernest Nagel, William Werkmeister, and Henry Margenau (to mention several) have rejected the attempts at interpreting quantum mechanics and the wave-particle dilemma in terms of a multi-valued or non-Aristotelian logic. 48

The Polish school of mathematicians has produced the extension of the traditional two-valued A ‘logic’ to three- and many-valued ‘logic’; Chwistek has based a new foundation of mathematics and a new theory of aggregates on his semantic methods; but even these writers disregarded the general problems of non-elementalism, non-identity,and the necessity for a full-fledged [non-]A-system before their formulations can become free from paradoxes, valid, and applied to life. 49

I accept the absolute individuality of events on the unspeakable objective levels, which necessitates the conclusion that all statements about them are only probable in various degrees, introducing a general principle of uncertainty in all statements. 51

The Heisenberg theory is also characterized by its thoroughly behavioristic, actional, functional and operational character. The number of unjustified assumptions is the lowest in existence and most of the identifications are eliminated. According to Heisenberg, electrons and atoms do not have the ‘same’ kind of ‘reality’ is ordinary objects of lower order abstractions. This conclusion, which underlies his whole work, is of particular importance structurally. 52

Because of its structure, the Heisenberg theory is a very fundamental one and there is little doubt that Heisenberg methods will be elaborated further and will be kept as a permanent checking method in physics. 53

There remains but to mention some more characteristics of the Heisenberg theory which seem to have very far-reaching structural and semantic bearings. This theory appears frankly statistical and introduces fundamental probability assumptions. The moment we realize that the human organism is essentially an abstracting affair and that abstracting is performed on different levels, or in different orders, it becomes obvious that statistical methods and probability notions become fundamental. 54

This is not a priority-establishing paper, but I would like to quote a few striking passages from the Time-Binding papers of the mid-twenties. These clearly demonstrate that Korzybski had already made the psycho-logical commitment to general uncertainty (non-identity of orders of abstraction) which were to be worked out explicitly and in great detail in Science and Sanity. The first Time-Binding paper, delivered in abstract before the International Mathematical Congress, August, 1924 in Toronto, was characterized as “... a summary of a larger work on Human Engineering ...” i.e., Science and Sanity. Here is the opening ‘gun’ (laser ?) Of to that paper.

All human knowledge is conditioned and limited, at present, by the properties of light and human symbolism. 55

Korzybski further noted in 1924:

The theory of relativity has established another fact, that all we know and may know is a “joint phenomenon” of the observer and the observed. 57

Man to be a man and think as a man must be a relativist, which is an inevitable consequence of the application of correct symbolism to facts. He knows that he does not know, but may know indefinitely more ... 58

Gross empiricism is a delusion and he who professes it as a creed is probably more mistaken than the old metaphysicians were. 59

We see that, as the structure of the atom is reflected in a grandiose manner in the structure of the universe, so is the structure of the knowledge of the individual man reflected in the collective knowledge of mankind. 60

Although Russell’s theory and my own are strikingly similar, they are not at all the same thing; one works outside of mathematics [Korzybski’s], where the other does not. It would be extremely interesting and instructive to inquire as to what extent Principia Mathematica itself pays tribute to Aristotle. This important problem looms in the foreground the moment we have the pluck to face non-aristotelianism candidly. 61 [Italics mine: R. P. P.]

... all human life is a permanent dance between different orders of abstractions. 62

Psychologically Einstein made up his mind to talk sense or stop talking. He decided to see the world anew. He had to abstract himself to a very high order and free himself as much as possible from preconceived ideas, which are always implied by the accepted form of representation. He decided to see facts and label them anew. Helped by mathematical method and symbolism he succeeded. This involved a thorough-going behaviouristic attitude. But it was a new behaviourism in which the role of the observer is not disregarded. 63

... all human knowledge is postulational in structure ... 64

I have already made several references to neurological issues as they apply to the Korzybskian generalization of uncertainty. Korzybski very early in his writing career (begun only in his middle years) recognized that the human brain itself is the ultimate measuring instrument; that no amount of ‘extending the nervous system’ by use of instruments would allow us to avoid this ‘base line’ responsibility; it is we who abstract. Since those pioneering times, from World War I through the frantic inter-war ‘peace’ period to and through World War II, we have learned much more about human brain function than Korzybski could know. We can only wonder at his prescience: his specifically neurological formulations (relating specifically to the process of abstracting, orders of abstraction, etc.) have ‘become’ increasingly descriptive of the best, most recent information we have. Given the length of this paper, one supporting example (legions could be cited) must suffice.

In January, 1974, I attended a lecture at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in my native city. The lecture was given by Doctor Vernon B. Mountcastle, chief of neurological research for the Hopkins Hospital-University complex. Dr. Mountcastle’s lecture, delivered to keep the Hopkins medical community ‘up to date’ re brain research, was titled “The View From Within”. As I listened to the first part of his lecture (perhaps the first fifteen minutes) I was pleasantly shaken to my non-Aristotelian foundations -- I could even allow myself the fantasy that Dr. Mountcastle spoke in a deep bass with a rich, ‘r’-rolling Polish accent!

He made such points as: ‘reality’ as illusion; brain as only ‘link’ to ‘reality’; sensation as abstraction; sensation as set by encoding function of nervous system; perception as selection; perception as transformation (i.e., transducing of energy forms, e.g., light transmission, approximately 186, 000 miles per second, as opposed to neural, electrochemical transmission at approximate maximums of 225 miles per hour); he suggested perception as distinct from sensation; he suggested that isomorphism (similarity of representational structure) between brain event and non-brain event “looks to be the best we can hope for,” etc.

Dr. Mountcastle described the fundamental steps in the process of abstracting: structurally-determined selecting, transducing, integrating, projecting (all non-verbal). The general semanticist would merely add ‘talking’ (i.e., naming, describing, inferring, hypothesizing, theorizing, etc., etc.). 65

Dr. Mountcastle’s lecture proceeded to descriptions of precise measurements involving comparisons of human with monkey brains, etc., discussion of conclusions to be reached re correlations between brain damage and behavior (much in the manner of A. R. Luria 66), finally reaching a very musical crescendo with observations that seemed to depress him and some of his audience but which I, as an already ‘committed’ ‘uncertaintist’ found exhilarating:

• The brain is a prison
• all we ever know ‘directly’ about the ‘outside world’ is the result of sensory stimuli which have been transduced at peripheral levels
• there is some ‘commonality’ at peripheral levels: “beyond that, we are all uniquely private.”

We have already seen an awareness of this problem in neuro-physics (which includes neuro-electro-chemistry as a sub-set) expressed by Bronowski above. This awareness is now becoming common property (even allowing for such disputes as that ‘raging’ around such formulations as the biochemical basis of ‘schizophrenia’). The information theoretician Jagjit Singh states the problem well:

... there is a kind of indeterminacy, which though quite different in essence [sic] from the famous principle of Heisenberg, is just as effective a barrier to our understanding of the living brain. The indeterminacy arises from the fact ... that the more “micro” our neurological probe the less “macro” is our comprehension of the working of the cerebral cortex as a whole. 67

Korzybski's reaction to having internalized the mathematical notion of function may be suggested in this way:

If language is a function of brain, then by studying language, we can learn something about brain-function. Apparently, as brain varies (evolution), so does language vary: L=f(B); as language varies (culture), so does brain vary: B=g(L). 68

We have noted Mendelssohn’s extrapolation of indeterminism to such ‘philosophical’ problems as ‘determinism’ and ‘free will’. In a book on philosophy which is notable for its paucity of references to Heisenberg (not to mention Korzybski), D. M. MacKay makes this important but curiously innocent-sounding ‘admission’:

We are gradually accumulating evidence which suggests that brain tissue doesbehave according to the same physical principles as the rest of the body; and we now know also that no behavior-pattern which we can observe and specify is beyond the capabilities of a physical mechanism. On the other hand, it is undeniable that some processes in the brain might occasionally [!] be affected by physically indeterminate events of the sort which Heisenberg’s principle allows. 69

The foregoing may make it easier for us to appreciate Korzybski’s sharpest expression of generalized uncertainty: “Whatever you say something is, it is not.” The denial of identity, the assertion of non-identity (of orders of abstraction) grow out of Korzybski’s concomitant awareness of ‘absolute individuals’ as functions of a continuum -- with the human brain, the inventor-discoverer of the ‘laws’ of physics, at its ‘center’.

Bachelard was very aware of Korzybski’s neuro-implications:

For Korzybski, the linkage of thought events is equivalent to a linkage of cerebral functions; to free oneself from certain habits of thinking is to break with cerebral determinism. 71

Running through most of the many passages quoted in this paper (with the notable exceptions of Bachelard, Brillouin and Korzybski), I detect a tone of fear-tinged regret, a deep underlying yearning for certainty (or whatever we can salvage of it) in the face of a grudgingly accepted but not internalized uncertainty. That continuing (culturally determined?) ‘need’ for certainty, rather than the uncertainty formulations themselves, have, it seems to me, kept restricted and general uncertainty subjects of controversy. The formulations seem incontrovertible; the semantic reactions they trigger seem all the more intense and uncomfortable.

One way ‘around’ generalized uncertainty (which does not say that we cannot have relatively secure measurements at a time T) may be to give special emphasis to formulations of invariance. Henry Margenau’s 1971 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, “Invariance as a Criterion of Reality,” states the case well, although he seems insufficiently sensitive to the need for the modifier relative and runs afoul of Brillouin regarding the ‘reversibility of time’ (a formulation apparently very dear to closet absolutists). 72

Among those whose views we have been examining, Bronowski seems to have made the most explicit ‘retreat’ from uncertainty. In the chapter ‘Knowledge or Certainty’ from his The Ascent of Man, he even proposes re-naming an to some degree re-formulating the Principle of Uncertainty:

Yet the Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science or outside it, we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. 73

All knowledge, all information between human beings, can be exchanged only within a play of tolerance. 74

Perhaps we require more consciously explicit semantic reactions to Korzybski’s formulation of non-identity. Surely in the literature labeled ‘general semantics’ this formulation is often under-presented and under-understood. Korzybski is usually said to have formulated ‘identity’ as “absolute sameness in all aspects ...” and rightly so:

... it must be stated that ‘identity’, defined as ‘absolute sameness’ necessitates ‘absolute sameness’ in ‘all’ aspects, never to be found in the world, nor in our heads. Anything with which we deal on the objective [non-verbal] levels represents a process, different all the ‘time’, no matter how slow or fast the process might be; therefore, a principle or a premise that ‘everything is identical with itself’ is invariably false to facts. 76

Here seems the kernel of Korzybskian uncertainty. Any attempt to ‘pacify’ those for whom it may seem too brisk (we may picture the ‘epistemologist who came in from the cold’) may very well lead us to experience the historically familiar confusion of science and metaphysics and suffer again the very intolerance Bronowski so abhorred:

The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance fixed once for all the realisation that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. 77

...

I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died at Auschwitz, to stand ... as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. 78

We are being cut off from the biological past which moulded the eyes and the brains and the speech of our ancestors. The Intelligent Eye is for the first time confronted with an essentially unpredictable future, where present object hypotheses are bound to fail. As we create so we must adapt to what we have created; the danger is that we may create a world beyond the restraints of our intelligence: a world we cannot see. 79

2. Meyers, Russell. “Preface” to the 4th Edition (1958), Alfred Korzybski. Science and Sanity, pp. xi-xii.
Return

3. Mendelssohn, Kurt. The Quest for Absolute Zero: The Meaning of Low Temperature Physics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966, p. 137. The entire Chapter 7, “Indeterminacy,” pp. 136-160 is pertinent for this discussion.
Return

4. Ibid., p. 147.
Return

5. Hoffman, Banesh and Helen Dukas (collaborator). Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel. 1972, New York: Viking Press, p. 187.
Return

6. Ibid., p. 190.
Return

7. Ibid., p. 193.
Return

8. Ibid., p. 193.
Return

9. Brillouin, Leon. Scientific Uncertainty, And Information. New York: Academic Press, 1964 (Second Printing, 1966), pp. 20-21.
Return

10. Ibid., p. 21.
Return

11. Ibid., Ch. IV, “Imagination and Invention in a Theory”, pp. 39-45.
Return

12. Mendelssohn, op. cit., p. 244.
Return

13. See especially Edgar Miller, Clinical Neuropsychology, Ch. 6, pp. 115-123.
Return

14. Bronowski, Jacob. The Common Sense of Science. New York: Vintige Books, n. d., p. 70.
Return

15. Brillouin, op. Cit., p. 52. For a recent application of the ‘model’-‘reality’ problem to electronics, see David Slepian. “On Bandwidth”. Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol. 64, No. 3, March, 1976, pp. 292-294.
Return

16. Reiser, Oliver L. The Integration of Human Knowledge. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1958, pp. 282-283.
Return

17. Heisenberg, Werner. Philosophic Problems of Nuclear Science (1952). New York: Fawcett World Library, 1966, p. 28.
Return

18. Ibid., p. 43.
Return

19. Brillouin, op. cit., p. 53.
Return

20. Bachelard, op. cit., p. 96.
Return

21. Heisenberg, op. cit., p. 13.
Return

22. Brillouin, op. cit., pp. 19-20.
Return

23. Heisenberg, op. cit., pp. 17-18.
Return

24. Ibid., p. 19.
Return

25. Ibid. , p. 24.
Return

26. Ibid., p. 27.
Return

27. Ibid., p. 48.
Return

28. Ibid., p. 79.
Return

29. Bachelard, op. cit., p. 94.
Return

30. Bronowski, op. cit., pp. 69-70.
Return

31. Ibid., pp. 70-72.
Return

32. Brillouin, op. cit., p. 52.
Return

33. Ibid., p. 52.
Return

34. Ibid., p. 73.
Return

35. Mendelssohn, op. cit., p. 141.
Return

36. Swanson, Marjorie A. Scientific Epistemologic Backgrounds of General Semantics. Lakeville, Ct.: Institute of General Semantics, 1959, p. 61.
Return

37. Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Lakeville, Ct.: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company, 1933, 4th Ed., 1958, pp. 99, 214, 223, 426, 563 and 698.
Return

38. Ibid., p. 107.
Return

39. Ibid., p. 310.
Return

40. Ibid., p. 541.
Return

41. Ibid., p. 310.
Return

42. Ibid., p. 405.
Return

43. Ibid., pp. 540-41.
Return

44. Ibid., p. 541.
Return

45. Ibid., p. 760. Actually, this quotation, included in “Supplement III” of Science and Sanity, is from a paper delivered in 1931 before the American Mathematical Society.
Return

46. Skolimowski, Henryk. Polish Analytical Philosophy. New York: Humanities Press, 1967, p. 59.
Return

47. Ibid., P. 64.
Return

48. Reiser, op. cit., p. 302.
Return

49. Korzybski, op. cit., p. 541.
Return

50. Lukasiewicz, Jan. Selected Works. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co. and Warszawa: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970, passim.
Return

51. Korzybski, op. cit., p. 93.
Return

52. Ibid., p. 715.
Return

53. Ibid., p. 715.
Return

54. Ibid., pp. 715-16.
Return

55. Korzybski, Alfred. Time-Binding: The General Theory. Two Papers, 1924-1926. Lakeville, Ct.: Institute of General Semantics, 1949. Paper 1, p. 5.
Return

56. See Heisenberg, op. cit., pp. 47, 49 and 75 and Korzybski, Science and Sanity, pp. 426, 563 and 698.
Return

57. Korzybski, Time-Binding, I, op. cit., p. 7.
Return

58. Ibid., p. 15.
Return

59. Ibid., p. 17.
Return

60. Ibid., p. 22.
Return

61. Korzybski, Time-Binding, II, p. 8.
Return

62. Ibid., p. 19.
Return

63. Ibid., p. 27.
Return

64. Ibid., p. 22.
Return

65. I wish to stress that these remarks are based on notes I took at Dr. Mountcastle’s lecture. The factor of my own abstracting must therefore be kept in the foreground. I may have ‘heard’ only what seemed supportive of Korzybskian formulations. Nevertheless, to the extent that I have ‘quoted’ Dr. Mountcastle, explicitly or by implication, I believe the import of his remarks as transmitted here to be accurate.
Return

66. Luria, A.R. Higher Cortical Functions in Man. London: Tavistock, 1966, passim.
Return

67. Singh, Jagjit. Great Ideas in Information Theory, Language and Cybernetics. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966, p. 331.
Return

68. Pula, Robert P. “Neglected Formulations: Function and Multiordinality” in Lee Thayer, ed., Communication: General Semantics Perspectives. New York: Spartan-Macmillan, 1970, p. 47.
Return

69. MacKay, D. M. “Brain and Will” in Paul Edwards and Arthur Pap (eds.) A Modern Introduction to Philosophy. New York: The Free Press-Macmillan, 1965, p. 39.
Return

70. Miller, Edgar. Clinical Neuropsychology. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1972, passim. For an excellent, markedly interdisciplinary bibliography variously used, see Jack Fincher. Human Intelligence. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976.
Return

71. Bachelard, op. cit., p. 109.
Return

72. Margenau, Henry. “Invariance as a Criterion of Reality” in General Semantics Bulletin Nos. 38-39-40. Lakeville, Ct.: Institute of General Semantics, 1976, pp. 13-25, especially p. 17. For Brillouin’s views compare Chapter VI, “The Arrow of Time” in Scientific Uncertainty and Information, op. cit., pp. 58-68. The ‘invariance’ issue is discussed perhaps most successfully by Korzybski in Chapter XIX of Science and Sanity, “Mathematics and the Nervous System.” pp. 268-311.
Return

73. Bronowski, J. The Ascent of Man. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973, p. 365. Delivered as part of a well-received television broadcast in England and then (1975) the United States, this essay first appeared as “The Principle of Tolerance” in The Atlantic Monthly. Vol. 232, No. 6, December, 1973, pp. 60-66.
Return

74. Ibid., p. 365.
Return

75. Ibid., p. 365.
Return

76. Korzybski, Science and Sanity, op. cit., p. 194.
Return

77. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, op. cit., p. 367.
Return

78. Ibid., p. 374.
Return

79. Gregory, R. L. The Intelligent Eye. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970, p. 166.
Return

Brillouin, Leon. Scientific Uncertainty, and Information. New York: Academic Press, 1964.

Bronowski, Jacob. The Ascent of Man. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973.

Bronowski, Jacob. The Common Sense of Science. New York: Vintage Books, n.d.

Bronowski, Jacob. Science and Human Values. New York: Harper Brothers, 1956.

Fincher, Jack. Human Intelligence. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976.

Gregory, R. L. The Intelligent Eye. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970.

Heisenberg, Werner. Philosophic Problems in Nuclear Science. New York: Fawcett World Library, 1966.

Hoffman, Banesh, and Helen Dukas (collaborator). Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel. New York: The Viking Press, 1972.

Korzybski, Alfred. Manhood of Humanity. 1921. Lakevule, Ct.: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company, 2nd Edition, 1950.

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. 1933. Lakeville, Ct.: International Non-Aristotelian Publishing Co., 4th Edition, 1958.

Korzybski, Alfred. Time-Binding: The General Theory. Two Papers, 1924-1926. Lakeville, Ct.: Institute of General Semantics, 1949.

Lukasiewicz, Jan. (L. Borkowski, ed.) Selected Works. (Translated by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz and others). Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co. and Warszawa: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970.

Luria, A. R. Higher Cortical Functions in Man. London: Tavistock, 1966.

MacKay, D. M. “Brain and Will” in Paul Edwards and Arthur Pap (eds.) A Modern Introduction to Philosophy. New York: The Free Press- Macmillan, 1965.

Margenau, Henry. “Invariance as a Criterion of Reality” in General Semantics Bulletin Nos 38-39-40. Lakeville, Ct: Institute of General Semantics, 1976.

Mendelssohn, Kurt. The Quest For Absolute Zero: The Meaning of Low Temperature Physics. New York: McGraw-Hill (World University Library), 1966.

Meyers, Russell. “Preface” to Korzybski, Science and Sanity, 4th Edition, 1958.

Miller, Edgar. Clinical Neuropsychology. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1972.

Mountcastle, Vernon B. Lecture, The View from Within (from notes by R. P. Pula). Delivered before the Johns Hopkins Medical Community, Baltimore, Md., 1974.

Pula, Robert P. “Neglected Formulations: Function and Multiordinality” in Lee Thayer (ed.) Communication: General Semantics Perspectives. New York: Spartan-Macmillan, 1970.

Reiser, Oliver L. The Integration of Human Knowledge. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1958.

Singh, Jagjit. Great Ideas in Information Theory, Language and Cybernetics. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966.

Skolimowski, Henryk. Polish Analytical Philosophy. New York: Humanities Press, 1967.

Slepian, David. “On Bandwidth” in Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 64, No. 3, March, 1976, PP. 292-94. Originally given as the second Shannon Lecture at the International Syinposium on Information Theory, Notre Dame University (Indiana), October 31, 1974.

Swanson, Marjorie A. Scientific Epistemologic Backgrounds of General Semantics. Lakeville, Ct.: Institute of General Semantics, 1959.

Reprinted from Methodology and Science, Vol. 10-2-1977. Haarlem, The Netherlands.

BIOGRAPHY

A graduate of Loyola College in Baltimore(B.S.S.Sc., 1958), he has done graduate work in English and education at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins.

Mr. Pula works as a communication consultant in the Baltimore area. He conducts workshops for the staffs of various hospitals, teaches at Fort Meade and Anne Arundel Community College, conducts workshops in industrial communications, and works with small groups of disabled veterans on problems of communications. All of his professional activities are based explicitly or implicitly on general semantics.

Among his publications in general semantics are: “Neglected Formulations: Function and Multiordinality,” in Communication: General Semantics Perspec-tives, Spartan-Macmillan, 1970; “General Semantics as a General System Which Explicitly Includes the System-Maker,” in Coping With Increasing Complexity: Implications of General Semantics and General Systems Theory, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1974; “Extensional Devices in Release of Creativity” in General Semantics Bulletin, Nos. 41-42-43, 1977; “Identification: The Illusion-Delusion Builder” in General Semantics Bulletin, Nos. 44-45, 1978; and, in the same Bulletin (44-45) an extended review of Stephen Rose’s important book, The Conscious Brain.