As to opinions, [Korzybski] used to say, "In the old, 'democratic' way, everyone has a 'right' to his opinion. In the new way, scientifically, no one has a 'right' to his opinion—if he has not studied the matter and informed himself."
There ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't agoing to no more.— S. L. Clemons (Mark Twain): Huckleberry Finn, XLIII, 1885
The business of writing has altogether become contemptible to me; and I am become confirmed in the notion that nobody ought to write, —unless sheer fate force him to do it; —and then he ought (if not of the mountebank genus) to beg to be shot rather. — Thomas Carlyle: Letter to R. W. Emerson, June 2, 1858
This writing is an unnatural business. It makes your head hot and your feet cold, and it stops the digesting of your food. — John Burroughs (1837-1931)
Korzybski considered Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics , "a turning leaf in the history of human evolution and socio-cultural adjustment." [Qtd. by M. Kendig in "Book Comments" on Cybernetics, in General Semantics Bulletin 1 & 2: 46] The work of William Powers, Richard Marken and others in Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) has extended cybernetics (negative feedback control theory) into a detailed research program for human psychology [and the life sciences in general] which emphasizes human autonomy, a phenomenological perspective, and the rigorous modeling of behavior. PCT's multi-leveled theory of purposeful behavior as the control of perception (abstracting) offers new approaches for further research into the spiral mechanisms of time-binding that [Korzybski based his entire work upon.] PCT [provides] a way to study the relationships of language use to perception and other aspects of behavior at levels of detail not previously conceived of. [Korzybski faced limits in his work, by not having a scientific theory of psychology that went beyond stimulus-response viewpoints. Indeed, much of modern (2009) behavioral/social science still operates under the burden of the out-dated but still pervasive stimulus-response paradigm.] [The study of Korzybski's work] by PCT researchers (and vice versa) could open up new avenues of research and application in both fields.**N.B.- In a comment to this blogpost below, William T. Powers acknowledges the influence that Korzybski had on him when he was developing his work.
A.K. [Alfred Korzybski] got as far as he could, using the most up-to-date analyses of behavior he could find. But Korzybski's non-linear view of human behavior, expressed as early as his first 1921 book Manhood of Humanity [See Appendix II, p. 233 in the 2nd Edition] didn't jibe very well with the general stimulus-response paradigm under which the psychology of the time mainly operated. This paradigm, among other things, retains an underlying linear causation model and may imply an undue passivity of the organism. A new language (non-linear) and set of assumptions involving a more factual, 'circular' causation, feedback approach comes from William T. Powers' Behavior: The Control of Perception. PCT has more congruence with Korzybski's underlying vision than the stimulus-response view. Indeed, Powers as a young man studied Korzybski's work. Korzybski's analysis of human behavior needs to be updated with PCT. The core of his system remains intact. Indeed, much of the formulational bathwater he wanted to throw out can, I believe, be eliminated more easily by taking on the PCT viewpoint.I can summarize what I've said in a sentence: For serious students of the korzybskian non-aristotelian system and applied epistemology (popularly known as 'general semantics'), I consider PCT very very important.
HAYWARD, Calif., Nov. 16, 2009 — Just as 400 years ago a correct explanation of the solar system set the stage for major progress in the physical sciences, so today a correct explanation of control is setting the stage for major progress in the life sciences.Check out Dag's entire website Living Control Systems Publishing too! Full of interesting stuff and lots of it free. Dag is doing a service to humanity.
Increasing numbers of scientists are saying that Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) may soon revolutionize the psychological and social sciences. Developed by William T. (Bill) Powers, PCT is a quantifiable, testable model based on both psychological observation and engineering principles; it promises to bring our understanding of living systems to the level of accuracy and reliability long expected of the physical sciences.
Bill Powers explains:Control is a process of acting on the world we perceive to make it the way we want it to be,Dag Forssell, editor of the Book of Readings, elaborates on some implications:
and to keep it that way. Examples of control: standing upright; walking; steering a car;
scrambling eggs; scratching an itch; knitting socks; singing a tune. Extruding a pseudopod
to absorb a nanospeck of food (all organisms control, not only human beings).
The smallest organisms control by biochemical means, bigger ones by means of a nervous
system. Whole organisms control; the larger ones have brains that control; most have
organs that control; if they are composed of many cells, their cells control; the DNA which
directs their forms and functions controls; even some molecules, certain enzymes, control
by acting on the DNA to repair it when it’s damaged. Control is the most basic principle of
life and can be seen at every level of organization once you know what to look for.
…The problem is not that the life sciences got everything wrong; it’s just that they got the
most important things wrong: what behavior is, how behavior works, and what behavior
accomplishes."PCT shows that each person acts for the sole purpose of controlling what matters to that person. When parents, teachers, administrators, managers, sales people, lovers, and friends grasp the simple concepts of PCT, theyPerceptual Control Theory: Science & Applications—A Book of Readings
will be able to reason out for themselves how to handle conflicts and misunderstandings with the
respect that all human beings consider their right. PCT shows why, for a peaceful society to exist,
each person must recognize that every other person works the same way.
Available as a paperback from bookstores, ISBN 097401558X, and free pdf download for personal use at
Perceptual Control Theory: Science & Applications—A Book of Readings, the recently updated 272-page book includes 21 papers and complete chapters from 12 books—five by Powers, seven by his colleagues. Subjects include: psychotherapy, management, emotions, baby brain development, computer simulations and tutorials, scientific revolutions, dogma in psychology, scientific method, reverse engineering, robots, cybernetics, and more.
Man is ultimately a doctrinal being. Even our language has its silent doctrines, and no activity of man is free from some doctrines, so that the kind of metaphysics a man has, is not of indifference to his world outlook and his behavior. [Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings 1920-1950, p. 77]Not only non-Muslims but also many Muslims have a huge problem with a significant number of other Muslims and their interpretation of the religion of Islam, currently widely promulgated. The threat of this deadly doctrine of Islamism is not going to go away by ignoring it because some people consider it politically incorrect to take it seriously. Barry Rubin makes some necessary distinctions while not turning away from what, to some of us, appears obvious. Some of you probably won't like what he has to say. But here's the link: Why I Murdered 13 American Soldiers: Nidal Hassan Explains It All to You
…I a ‘pure Pole’ but an engineer much interested in mathematical physics, of course am non-aristotelian, and therefore if you wish to say so, my orientation is scientific and therefore Jewish. It is a silly way of putting it this way, but privately I can tell you that. The Jews themselves do not realize that, and so they themselves can not clean up their own house. Those pangs of passing from aristotelian to non-aristotelian orientations are very genuine ones. But there is nothing else for us to do than to put every kind of international problems on a strictly non-racial neutral impersonal scientific basis, and that’s what we are trying to do.[A.K. to Richard D. Loewenberg, Feb. 3, 1944. IGS Archives]
Facts are difficult to accept because they must be grasped; fancies are quickly taken on, since they require belief only.
Thinking can be shaped by heart, gall, glands, stomach, or even shifting eyes. Sometimes I wish that people's thoughts came in colors so one could see what part of the body sent them forth.[Probably a good thing that people's thoughts don't come in smells –BIK]
Thinking may be classified on a color chart, however, of poetic imagination. Some people's cognitions run rosy; others gray, even black. There are those who think yellow and those who live and breathe blood red. The minds of others are of peculiar color combinations. And there are sages whose badge is white, embodying all the colors. No human emotion is strange to them, yet none colors their thoughts.
A good thought, even when poorly presented, will finally emerge right side up.[A writer hopes. –BIK]
The last thought is always wiser than the first.[Not always. One can get sicklied over with the pale cast of too much thought. Then one must say "enough!" –BIK]
Thinking
Thought is a twig on the tree of emotion and instinct. As it was a million years ago, the first is still an outgrowth of the latter.
Men think quite alike; if it were different, they could not coexist even for a day. But most people judge by traditional or imitated judgment patterns, and snap judgments are the rule and the rulers.
Is thinking ever free? Wherever I meet it, I find it chained to a motive of one kind or another. The world operates on motivated thinking tied to prejudice, opportunism, greed, narrow-mindedness, selfishness, and a thousand other little passions and passionette that clutter up the narrow path of righteousness.
Dear Bruce,
I just read your blogpost A GS Revival? – Korzybski in Academia & the Communication Connection about how GS might start to reenter the academic world (which I would appreciate very much). In fact when I became interested in GS the absence of scientific reviews and recent research was a thing that nearly kept me from learning about GS at all. The reason: How could some discipline that claims to be rooted deeply in the scientific method be trusted, if it is not critically reviewed, revised and updated by scientists at regular universities?
I soon learned that GS seems to take a long winter sleep since the 'good old days' when it seemed to be comparatively popular. Undoubtedly you and your wife are with your book(s) two of the few persons that might change that by means of making GS accessible for readers in 2009. Since GS as a matter of fact is 'driving me sane' I would personally like to thank you for your efforts in making GS more understandable.
Nevertheless from my point of view two main problems remain: As far as I know there is a substantial lack of 'real' research on GS and a severe dearth of practical training material. Towards a solution to the first problem persons like the present IGS Executive Director Lance Strate might contribute in the near future. But what can be done with regard to practical training in GS?
The crucial importance of application of GS in every day life is stressed in nearly every book on GS I've read so far. But besides some kind of “homeworks” there is no material for training available. Therefore every persons interested in GS has to develop it's own training from scratch. I believe this complicates things especially for people from outside the USA (like me) who have not the opportunity to meet with others to work or discuss issues regarding GS so easily. The new IGS-website has a forum and a section called “Learning Center” and this is definitely a good start. But still this provides no means for systematic training; a way to get GS formulations 'into the human nervous system'.
So why do I dwell on this specific point so much? In your blogpost mentioned above you write that you have been influenced (maybe trained?) by some general semanticists like Charlotte Schuchardt Read, Allen Walker Read, Stuart A. Mayper, Robert Pula, Kenneth G. Johnson, etc. You also write that you “qualify as the world's foremost living authority on Korzybski's life and work”. Together with your proven ability to write on GS very 'well', that makes you the only candidate I can imagine to design a practical GS-training - maybe in form of an “workbook” additional to “Drive Yourself Sane”.
I believe such a “workbook” might be a beneficial project for a writer like you and a true 'time-binding' from your teachers in GS towards the people who try to learn about GS in the future.
To cut a long story short: For by now (2009) I believe GS is in fact too 'acadamic' (theoretic rather than practical) to be 'academic' (being a subject of scientific research). How can we expect persons not trained in GS to evolve a discipline that is not theirs? Who is doing the research in chemistry? The trained alchemists? I hope you give this ideas a try.
Last but not least: Let me again thank you for what you have done so far. It really helped me to get along with a lot of things.
Kind regards,
Benjamin Eckenfels (Gießen/Germany)
Silence makes a fence for wisdom.
We are right then in saying, that these virtues are formed in a man by his doing the actions; but no one, if he should leave them undone, would be even in the way to become a good man. Yet people in general do not perform these actions, but taking refuge in talk they flatter themselves they are philosophising, and that they will so be good men: acting in truth very like those sick people who listen to the doctor with great attention but do nothing that he tells them: just as these then cannot be well bodily under such a course of treatment, so neither can those be mentally by philosophising. [Book II, IV, p. 32. D.P. Chase, translation. NY: E.P. Dutton, 1911, (1915, 1920)]Like it or not, what is called "consciousness of abstracting" in korzybskian lingo constitutes something, like the 'virtue' mentioned above, to be developed through deliberate action over time, in order to become a habit. Korzybski and others following him (including my wife and I) have taught techniques for developing such consciousness. (Of course, one does not necessarily need to study 'general semantics' to do this.) Although,using general semantics will surely involve some changes in how you talk, talking about general semantics does not necessarily indicate that you are practicing it.
Symbols are fine; we live by words, figures, pictures. But as Alfred Korzybski postulated seven decades ago, the symbol is not the thing itself: you cannot milk the word “cow,” and as he put it, “a map is not the territory.” Arthur Laffer’s famous curve drawn on a cocktail napkin offers some economists a nice shorthand guide to his supply-side idea, but it is not the theory itself. Today’s mind-bending surge toward the use of words about graphs and poll trends — even when presented in color on elaborate Power Point presentations — takes us steps away from reality. There must be a curve to illustrate that, and I say bend it way back.William Safire. A wise voice now silenced. But we still have the writings he left behind.
The Institute of General Semantics is pleased to announce that its judges have selected The Hidden Side of Babel: Unveiling Cognition, Intelligence and Sense by Laura Bertone (Buenos Aries: Evolución, 2006) as the winner of its inaugural Samuel I. Hayakawa Book Prize. The Hayakawa Book Prize goes to the most outstanding work published in the past five years on topics of direct relevance to the discipline of general semantics, and includes a cash award of $1,000. The Hidden Side of Babel was chosen by judges Martin Levinson, Jacqueline Rudig, and Lance Strate, from a highly competitive field of ten finalists. Dr. Bertone is a Visiting Professor at the Masters’ Program of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Buenos Aires, and the Director of the consulting firm EVOLUCION, devoted to improving communication processes and to organizing educational seminars and events. A native of Argentina, she worked in Paris as an AIIC professional conference interpreter for twenty years, and holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Paris VIII University. The Hayakawa Prize will be presented to Laura Bertone at the Across the Generations: Legacies of Hope and Meaning conference on September 11-13, 2009, at Fordham University in New York City, where she will be one of the featured speakers.Congratulations Laura! My wife helped Laura edit her book and having read it myself I heartily recommend it to one and all. In a very real sense we all actually speak different languages even if we speak the 'same' language. What are the challenges in trying to understand and not misunderstand, to be understood and not be misunderstood? How do we know when we are doing one and not the other? Laura's book will give you a new perspective on how you communicate and how you can do it better.
Linguistic theory is seen by many of its practitioners as an enterprise as ethically neutral as mathematics. But it provides apparent scientific justification for a model of cognition which is currently fashionable for non-scientific reasons, and which threatens the future flourishing of the human spirit. According to Steven Pinker and, before him, Noam Chomsky, language is a rich source of evidence for the idea that the structure and contents of human thought are constrained by genetics as rigidly as the shape and functioning of the human body. This idea harmonizes with legal and political developments of the last twenty years, under which distinctive cultural norms evolved by independent societies are increasingly being swept aside in favour of universal enforcement of aprioristic systems imposed from above. Whereas 18th- and 19th-century imperialists recognized that the cultures of different societies were indeed different (though they set out to eliminate some of the differences), 21st-century internationalism is made to seem uncontroversial by trivializing the extent of existing cultural differences. The Pinker/Chomsky model of human cognition implies that the differences are indeed trivial. But that model is baseless. It rests chiefly not on empirical observation but on surmises about language behaviour; now that corpus linguistics is allowing us to check the accuracy of such surmises, they turn out to be wildly wrong even for English. Meanwhile, anthropological linguists such as Daniel Everett are showing us that differences between the intellectual worlds encoded by the languages of separate societies can be far larger than even pre-generative linguists suspected. If our genes do not constrain our ideas, we have no reason to assume that the belief-system of the leaders of North American and European societies anno 2006 is the last word in human intellectual development. We must be free to move forward intellectually in the future, and we should reject models of human cognition which deny that freedom.Here's the link to the full article: Minds in Uniform
"It's important to be clear that there's no evidence that any program makes soldiers more resilient," said George A. Bonanno, a psychologist at Columbia University. But he and others said the program could settle one of the most important questions in psychology: whether mental toughness can be taught in the classroom."No evidence? Also not the case.
I've finally seen one.** I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one.
But I will tell you anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.
— Gelett Burgess
"To probe a hole we first use a straight stick to see how far it takes us. To probe the visible world we use the assumption that things are simple until they prove to be otherwise." (The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, p. 231)The point I want to make here with this quote is that one must first use the tool, whether a stick or an assumption or a system of 'thought', i.e., sincerely seeking to understand and apply it (and the understanding and application go hand-in-hand) to see how far it takes us. Only then can one can be in a position to know its limitations and in turn criticize it.
"...I am writing to you to clear up the best I can the problem of 'abnormal negativistic attitudes'. It is a most serious problem and very fundamental in psychiatry, and more so in daily life, usually disregarded. In living life there is such a thing as the 'investigatory reflex', without which life in general, and particularly human life, could not exist in their most complex environment. This means that to adjust ourselves to environments we have to study the environment, in other words investigate it. If we have the sick negativistic [underlined in original-BIK] attitude we will not investigate, and so never learn by experience.In the impact of life, if we are not 'open-minded', willing to learn, we are hopeless. In schooling we know that to learn anything we have to be receptive, and therefore not negativistic. A damn fool little boy in school who tries to be a smarty (negativistic) never will learn anything, and so the situation is hopeless. I can do no better to explain, short of a treatise, what negativism can do in life. There is no learning with negativism, and human life depends on learning.If you would investigate life and even sick patients in hospitals, you would understand what negativism means. It's really a wrecker of human life. It definitely involves fundamental life issues. Certainly 'abnormal negativistic attitudes' mean much more than a layman, without studying these issues, can understand.This is the best I can do to answer you by letter.Negativism certainly comes in fundamentally in our work. To undo that is extremely difficult, if at all possible, as it involves a whole reorientation of our attitudes.With all best wishes,
Yours cordially,[AK to Otis Dixon Phillips, June 21, 1945. IGS Archives at Read House, Ft. Worth, Texas]
Alfred Korzybski"
Today, after a number of years of doing this work, I have concluded that those people who work in the field of the Healing Arts often are not equipped with the understanding of how their words are symbolic forms of communication having great import in their client’s minds. Since they are often seen as the experts in the field (this is starting to change as healthcare moves to more of participatory process, but there still are huge gaps in its practice) there is a primary accountability for taking the lead in communicating in a healthy way. I guess what I’m also saying is that it would be helpful for medical professionals to learn the principles of General Semantics that would give them more tools to work with in dialoguing with the people they serve. Another way of saying this is that it would give them a supportive means of symbol making that leads to more healthy outcomes.As a veteran physical therapist and general-semantics scholar/practitioner I heartily agree.
"Teachers, be careful with your words," warns the Talmud, "lest the disciples who follow you will drink of evil waters and die." When the waters of wisdom become polluted with confusion and contradiction, it is society's youth who will pay the price through the erosion of moral clarity and moral principles.I think Korzybski would agree to that. I know I do.
General-semantics constitutes a theory of metacognition, a working theory of how humans construct their perceptions, beliefs, theories, etc. Metacognition, thinking about thinking, has traditionally been considered part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, the theory of knowledge.
Over the years many philosophers such as Plato and Descartes have speculated and theorized about how we know what we know. These theorists lacked much empirical knowledge of the human nervous system, psychology and other relevant areas of knowledge such as how scientists and mathematicians actually behave in order to gain knowledge. As a result their views were often riddled with untenable assumptions such as that of a `mind' separate from a `body'. Among other things, what distinguished Korzybski from these theorists was his effort to bring to bear studies in neuroscience, behavioral/social science, natural science, mathematics, linguistics and other fields to develop a scientific and thus up-to-date and open-ended, applied epistemology.
'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 footprint 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." '
"...do not make speeches about G.S. I do not know whether you are well enough to do that. It is one thing to study it, but still another thing to talk about it. It is important for you to continute to study and apply the methods for your own orientation*, but first we have to understand the principles and apply them ourselves, before we can talk about them to others."
*[Korzybski used underlining in his typing to italicize rather than the italics I have used here.- BIK]
"We must be aware continuously that in life on the un-speakable level we deal only with absolute individuals, be they objects, situations, or s.r [semantic (evaluational) reactions]." (p. 396, 5th Ed.)I found a lovely poem "Nothing Twice" by his fellow Pole Wislawa Szymborska who gives the notion of non-identity her poetic turn. The first verse:
Nothing can ever happen twice.A link to the rest of the poem—"Nothing Twice"
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
The southeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 37th Street, in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, was given the honorary designation of Jan Karski Corner on Thursday, in memory of the Polish liaison officer who infiltrated the Warsaw ghetto and a German concentration camp and carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to Western leaders.Karski, at the risk of his own life, was smuggled in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto and a German Death Camp and then made his way to England and the U.S in 1942 to tell what he witnessed of the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis. As an agent of the Polish-Government-in-Exile, he tried to convince the leaders of the countries allied against Germany to do something to save the Jews as well as others being mass-murdered by the Germans. Korzybski was in contact with Polish-emigre groups in the U.S. and knew quite early what was going on, as did many Poles living in the West. He undoubtedly felt proud of the Polish resistance to Germany and of Polish assistance to the Jews, and felt disgust at the vast indifference and inaction in the West.
A monument to Mr. Karski, showing him seated on a bench, holding a cane and with a chess board nearby, was erected at the same intersection in November 2007, outside the Polish Consulate. Mr. Karski, who later became a professor of history at Georgetown University, died in 2000 at the age of 86. The new street sign in his honor stands outside the De Lamar mansion, the consul’s residence.
... You should warm yourself opposite the fire of the Sages, but be cautious that you not be burned by their glowing coals. For their bite is the bite of a fox. Their sting is the sting of a scorpion. Their hiss is the hiss of a serpent. And all their words are coals of fire.
"At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people; but those who stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with all the marks and circumstances of wonder, neither, indeed, was I much in their debt ; having never, till then, seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all reclined either to the right or the left ; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars, interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsicords, and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the end of a short stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried pease, or little pebbles (as I was afterwards informed). With these bladders they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning ; it seems, the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons, who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics, nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is, when two or three more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresseth himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and, upon occasion, to give him a soft flap on his eyes, because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of jostling others, or being jostled himself, into the kennel.
It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which he would be at the same loss with me, to understand the proceedings of these people, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the island, and from thence to the royal palace. While we were ascending, they forgot several times what they were about, and left me to myself, till their memories were again roused by their flappers; for they appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more disengaged.
. . . And although they are dextrous enough upon a piece of paper in the management of the rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet, in the common actions and behaviour of life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case. Imagination, fancy, and invention they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their language by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two forementioned sciences ."
JONATHAN SWIFT (Gulliver's Travels, A Voyage to Laputa)
