Saturday, February 11, 2012

Quote of the Day - "One And One"

Korzybski liked to quote his mentor, Cassius J. Keyser who said, "To be is to be related" Here is a 'related' quote from one of Korzybski's favorite books, Sir Arthur S. Eddington's 1928 The Nature of the Physical World, Chapter V – "Becoming":
"There is one ideal of survey which would look into each minute compartment of space in turn to see what it may contain and so make what it would regard as a complete inventory of the world. But this misses any world-features which are not located in minute compartments. We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because "two" is "one and one". We forget that we have still to make a study of "and". Secondary physics is the study of "and"—that is to say, of organization."
Korzybski marked and underlined the last two sentences of this paragraph in his copy of Eddington's book, and used them in the opening list of quotes at the start of Chapter XII, "ON ORDER", of Science and Sanity (p. 151). 

No comments: