Institute of General Semantics: Science Today

The [fourth] edition of Science and Sanity[1] was published twenty-five years after the First. In the Introduction to the Fourth edition, Russell Meyers, M.D., wrote:

It comes as something of a surprise that as the 1958 reprinting of Science and Sanity goes to press no major alterations seem as yet to be required . . . . In this modern world of rapid change . . . the continuing substantiality of Korzybski’s 1933 formulations must be regarded as a tribute to his vision and integrative genius.

My purpose today is to examine — sketchily but probingly — how science, in particular physical science, has developed after another twenty-five years; and how its achievements and problems and prospects compare with those viewed by Korzybski in 1933. He wrote then (Science and Sanity, p. 94):

In the rough, all science is developing in the non-Aristotelian direction. The more it succeeds in overcoming the old structural implications of speech, and the more successful it is in building new vocabularies, the further and more rapidly it will progress.

No one here, I think, would claim that there has been any dearth of new vocabularies, in and out of science; but what Korzybski called for was successful new vocabularies, in the sense of freeing us from “the old structural implications of speech.”

An old example of such a successful term is gas, coined in the 1600’s by van Helmont, to free us from the notion that all the volatile materials being discovered were different varieties of air. Nowadays we have a multitude of such coinings: laser, hologram, gene, extralevel, metalevel (those are a couple I invented), vitamin, quark, antigen, eigenfunction, and on endlessly; no field is without its fat glossary of special terms, each of which represents a new formulation: a new phenomenon or a new way of looking at familiar things. But some of these are less than successful: psyche, aura, vital force, id, black hole[*]^*, mentalism, resonance (of chemical structures); instead of freeing us, they bog us down in old elementalisms or superstitions. Not many of them, however, pertain to physics.

The foundation of science^l933 was, according to Korzybski, the non-Newtonian physics that sprang up with the dawn of the twentieth century to deal with annoying problems that classical physics couldn’t handle. He devoted Book III of Science and Sanity to explaining the neuro-semantic implications of relativity and quantum theory. These two branches remain, fifty years later, the cornerstones of science. He said (Science and Sanity, p. 719):

But even in his optimism he did not foresee that six years later the work would be done that made nuclear energy possible for public power, and for devastating weapons that can make obsolete either war, or humanity. He did not dare to predict that men would be on the moon within four decades, a feat that depended on the electronic technology that came out of quantum mechanics at least as much as it did on rocket fuels.

The extension came more from the direction of quantum theory, and its theorists today are hard at work, looking for a grand unified field theory that will unite gravitational, electro-magnetic, and the weak and strong nuclear forces.

In the past fifty years, the notion of scientific progress has become much more complicated, and much less automatically equated with human good. Korzybski surely would have sympathized with those who are trying to steer science into being more responsive to human needs, even though he might have scorned some of their tactics as tending to harden two-valued orientations. Before it became fashionable he was concerned with the pollution of the environment, but not so much air, land, and water as the neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic environment.

If science is to develop in a non-Aristotelian direction, it must adopt Korzybski’s general principle of uncertainty — far more comprehensive than Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which refers strictly to simultaneous measurements of related physical qualities like position versus momentum, or energy versus time. Korzybski’s Uncertainty Principle comes straight out of the non-Aristotelian premises he listed (Science and Sanity, p. 93), including this:

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.

We may be troubled by the rampant allness of that sentence, but I am (metalevel 3) uncertain how (metalevel 2) uncertain Korzybski intended his pronouncements of (metalevel 1) uncertainty to be.[2]

In any event this general principle puts him squarely in accord with the most solid accomplishments of twentieth century philosophy of science. I refer of course to the work of Sir Karl Popper, whose Logic of Scientific Discovery, which will be fifty years old next year, has an honored place on my bookshelf along with Science and Sanity. Let me give my standard quotation from it[3]

The old scientific ideal of episteme — of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge — has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be “absolutely certain”.

More and more are knowledgeable scientists coming to recognize this as the rationale that underlies their work. Human activities are called science when the statements they produce about the world can be tested: not by confirming them, because all statements “are only probable”, “must remain tentative for ever”, but by attempting to refute them. If there is no conceivable circumstance that would refute a theory, if it can account for anything that might happen, then according to “Popper’s Chopper” it is not science, but metaphysics. Einstein expressed this same principle of falsifiability and tentativeness when he said “to our experimental tests of theories, Nature answers No, or Maybe.” (I have spoken before about this triumvirate: Einstein, Popper, Korzybski.)[4]

But even scientists very well trained in their disciplines may show a dismaying lack of awareness of this tentativeness. One of the best of recent books which attempt to make today’s physics mean something to the intelligent layperson is The Cosmic Code[5] by Heinz Pagels of The Rockefeller University, lately President of the New York Academy of Sciences. His book explains difficult mathematical relations with beautiful clarity, and it was very helpful to me in preparing this paper.

Yet that book is subtitled Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature — wouldn’t general semanticists instinctively want to say “as a language about Nature”? — and Part I is “The Road to Quantum Reality”, which the author describes as “the observer-created reality.” He says (p. 64):

What is actually going on in the quantum world depends on how we decide to observe it. The world just isn’t “there” independent of our observing it; what is “there” depends in part on what we choose to see — reality is partially created by the observer.

that is where we part company. Following Korzybski and Pula,[*]^** I feel I have to make a fundamental distinction between, on the one hand, what is there (what is going on, WIGO Sam Bois called it; the unspeakable event level, the parabola, Extralevel I); and, on the other hand, the measurement of what is there (what the observer chooses to observe, the ‘reality’ that we create, somewhere in Extralevels II and III - all this, of course, before we even get to Extralevel IV to say anything about it).[*]^***

Korzybski pointed out that because of the finite speed of nerve impulses and of light, the observation of an event can only come after the event; so whatever influence the observation has can only be on a later event. To continue Pagel’s account:

These properties of the quantum world — its lack of objectivity, its indeterminacy, and the observer-created reality — which distinguish it from the ordinary world perceived by our senses I refer to as “quantum weirdness.” Einstein resisted quantum weirdness, especially the notion of an observer-created reality.

Einstein found himself a lonely old-fashioned figure when the majority of quantum physicists accepted the “quantum weirdness” which became known as the Copenhagen interpretation. He never was convinced; he accepted the principle of uncertainty, and conceded that the quantum physics based on it was consistent, but he denied that it gave, to quote Pagels, “a complete and objective description of Nature.” Pagels continues:

This objection, however, was a philosophical issue and not one of theoretical physics. The debate between Einstein and Bohr continued throughout their lives, but it was never resolved. Nor could it have been. Once the debate left the common assumption that reality is instrumentally determined, and became a difference in the appreciation of reality, there was no possibility of resolution.

In my view, both parties to this debate were wrong: Einstein wanted a description of the event level, Extralevel I — not possible, only abstractions from it can be described — but the quantum physicists with the “assumption that reality is instrumentally determined” were giving a “complete and objective description” of an abstraction of an abstraction. That description may well be consistent; it’s chosen so as to be consistent.

Unfortunately, people in general, including many scientists, disregard [Extra-] levels II and III completely, and react as if unconscious that IV “is not” I.[6]

But I can not see anyone who has absorbed general semantics accepting anything as “a complete and objective description of Nature.” Even Niels Bohr, the Godfather of the Copenhagen weirdos, showed a lucid glimmer of consciousness of abstracting when he said:

Popper taught me that if I want a sane view of the world, I should not accept paradoxes placidly; and Korzybski’s work suggests that if I find “quantum weirdness”, it doesn’t mean ‘God’ is trying to tease me - it may just indicate that my expectations and my formulations are inadequate. If I persist in talking about ‘reality’ without recognizing it as a multiordinal term pointing to different vague content on every level, I am bound to find it weird. General semantics has a job to do, to straighten out quantum physicists.

But that claim to a “complete and objective description of Nature” worries me also on historical grounds. “Those who do not know the past,” said Santayana, “are condemned to repeat it.” This claim of a description not only “complete and objective” but consequently final was stated in the sharpest terms by an anonymous great physicist in C. P. Snow’s novel The Search.[8] (He could possibly have been modeled on the late P. A. M. Dirac.) He said:

The fundamental laws of physics and chemistry are laid down for ever. The details have got to be filled up. [But] in a sense, physics and chemistry are finished sciences.

That was published in 1934, a year after Science and Sanity; but it reminds me very much of what I have read about what they were saying in the 1890’s: the grand edifice of Newtonian-Maxwellian theory had laid down the fundamental laws, and only the details remained to be filled up. There were only a few tiny problems that the theories couldn’t cope with — and then the roof fell in: radioactivity was discovered, and relativity and quantum theory, developed to handle those tiny problems, established new fundamental laws that relegated Newtonian physics to the status of “special case”. Snow called it “the great, the final scientific revolution.”

In contrast, Korzybski was - modest. Yes! Science and Sanity was subtitled “Introduction to non-Aristotelian Systems”, and he pointed out the significance of the plural. He claimed only to have created the first non-Aristotelian system, not the last.

It does appear that the latest experimental tests based on Bell’s Inequality, which developed out of the challenge to quantum physics of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen’s famous thought-experiment, show that quantum physics predicts results better than “local causality.” Pagels has a beautiful discussion of this. But who among us would foreclose the power of the human imagination by asserting that no one will ever develop a more profound and comprehensive (and more weird) theory that will perhaps not discard quantum physics, but will relegate it in turn to the status of “special case”?[9]

Korzybski had no inkling of the unraveling to come of the genetic material, DNA and RNA (whose importance Barbara Wright may tell you has been oversold), but I think it would have pleased him to know that when Crick and Watson were working out its structure, they did not rely entirely on pencil and paper or computer high-order abstractions; they had their machine shop build careful scale models of the chemical units, the riboses and phosphates and purines and pyrimidines, which they then put together to verify the angles and distances within the double helix. In short, they extensionalized to a great degree.

Korzybski was very much concerned with the structure, order, relations in the human brain. I think he would have combatted vigorously the excesses of left hemisphere/right hemisphere dichotomy of recent years. For example, here is Kelly Aune in the Spring 1983 ETC.[10]:

We have found that the left hemisphere appears to work analytically, processing information in a linear, sequential fashion. it seems to handle most of the language abilities of the brain. The right brain [notice its promotion from being just a hemisphere], however, seems to work holistically. It integrates several pieces of information simultaneously and is adept at spatially cognitive processes. As the left side seems to work in a reductionist mode, the right appears to work in a coordinating and cooperative manner. It is largely “mute”, often manifesting its work as an intuition or a hunch. It doesn’t mark time the way the left side does, making it further suited for bursts of seemingly inspired creativity.

How the “left brain” can read and write without integrating information and being adept at spatial cognition is not explained. But Aune goes on to speak of the left-brained culture of the West (sorry about that, Michelangelo) and the right-brained culture of the East. (Decimal notation came from the Hindus.) Altogether what Korzybski, like Pula, would have called a “new elementalism”.

[1] Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, 1933. Lakeville, CT: The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co., 4^th Edition, 1958. [Now in its 5^thEdition, Brooklyn, NY.]

[2] M. Kendig, in “A Note . . .: Reflections on the State of the Discipline, 1968”, General Semantics Bulletin, No. 37, 1970: 70, writes of “an aptitude for happiness which comes with second order certainty of first order uncertainty.”

[4] S. A. Mayper, “The Place of Aristotelian Logic in Non-Aristotelian Evaluating: Einstein, Korzybski, and Popper”, General Semantics Bulletin, No. 47, 1980: 106.

[****] “Extralevel” is my suggested term for the broad levels of abstraction described by Korzybski in a 1950 paper. See GSB #4-5, pp. 9-11 (1950) and #46, p. 42 (1979).

[6] Alfred Korzybski, “The Role of Language in the Perceptual Processes”, in Perception: An Approach to Personality, R. R. Blake and G. V. Ramsey, eds. New York: Ronald Press, 1951; reprinted in General Semantics Bulletin, No. 36, 1969: 18.

[10] Kelly Aune, “The Evolutionary Move Towards Integration and Holism in Humanity,” ETC. 40, 1983: 22. No source is cited for these ‘findings’. To those who want an authentic, thorough account of functional asymmetry of the brain which is careful to avoid schizophrenic conclusions, I recommend (despite the book’s awful title) S. P. Springer and G. Deutsch, Left Brain, Right Brain. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1981.