Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity online

As the man said – ‘The map is not the territory’…


The entire text of Alfred Korzybski’s
Science and Sanity is online, albeit in pdf format. I can’t claim I’ve gotten through the entire book myself… it’s been bending my bookshelf for quite a while now.

The origin of this work was a new functional definition of ‘man’, as formulated in 1921, based on an analysis of uniquely human potentialities; namely, that each generation may begin where the former left off. This characteristic I called the ‘time-binding’ capacity. Here the reactions of humans are not split verbally and elementalistically into separate ‘body’, ‘mind’, ’emotions’, ‘intellect’, ‘intuitions’, etc., but are treated from an organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment (external and internal) point of view. This parallels the Einstein-Minkowski space-time integration in physics, and both are necessitated by the modern evolution of sciences.
– Alfred Korzybski

It is vital to have a constant awareness or habitual feeling that our formulation of a situation is not the situation itself. The structure of our statements about things is not necessarily the way things are.
– Korzybski

A review of Science & Sanity »
(Thanks to Alex Burns at disinfo.com)
Read Science and Sanity »

daev
Chief Bottle Washer at Blather
Writer, photographer, environmental campaigner and "known troublemaker" Dave Walsh is the founder of Blather.net, described both as "possibly the most arrogant and depraved website to be found either side of the majestic Shannon River", and "the nicest website circulating in Ireland". Half Irishman, half-bicycle. He lives in southern Irish city of Barcelona.