Chapter 27 - Measure Of Man: Part 5 - Cosmic Pipe Dreamer

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

Sometime in August, Mira had changed venues from the summer retreat of the New York rich on Long Island to Manchester, Massachusetts—a seaside resort town for Boston socialites—on Cape Ann, north of Boston. Exhibiting her work and painting portraits, she got a write-up in the August 24 edition of the town’s North Shore Breeze and Reminder: “Countess Korzybska, Portrait Painter on Ivory, Impresses as of Boundless Enthusiasm”.(38)  Almost half of the two-column article, which took up most of the page, was about Alfred. “Speak of Count Alfred...and the fires of unified enthusiasm and belief come into the Countess’ eyes.” It seemed evident she was missing him. And Alfred no doubt felt likewise. In September, Mira followed her clientele to Boston. Alfred decided to join her for a prolonged visit starting the first week of October when Mira had been asked to exhibit her paintings and present a luncheon talk on “Art in relation to manhood and humanity” at the Women’s City Club of Boston. Alfred came as a luncheon guest.(39) 

Together in Boston for most of October, they mainly stayed at the Copley Plaza Hotel. When not together, Mira worked while Alfred met some of the people from the area with whom he had corresponded, and made arrangements to give some talks. Some of the people he spent time with included psychologist and Yiddishist Abraham Aaron Roback (then at Harvard), Harvard mathematician Edward V. Huntington, a friend of Keyser, and Harvard zoologist William Morton Wheeler, an expert on the social life of ants, who had written positively about Manhood of Humanity. Alfred wanted to present his views to the brightest ‘minds’ he could find at Boston institutions like Harvard and M.I.T. On the other hand, before his trip he had felt some hesitancy about giving a formal, scientifically-oriented lecture featuring the Anthropometer. He’d presumed that prior to speaking about it, he “… would have BEFORE to write a rather large book on many scientific [epistemological] problems which underlie the theory of the Anthropometer,...”.(40) Which, of course, he had hardly begun to do.

However a few days after he got to Boston, he received a package from Catherine E. Cook, the manager at Open Court Publishers in Chicago, whom he and Mira had befriended. Miss Cook (or “Cookie” as they sometimes called her) occasionally sent complimentary books to Alfred, which she thought were ‘up his alley’.This package contained the new English translation of Ernst Cassirer’s two books Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which Open Court had just published in one volume. Korzybski did his first reading of it at once and found “….to my astonishment and delight that Cassirer did the job for me, and of course in a much better way that would ever have been done by me.”(41) Cassirer’s book became one of his favorites. Reading it helped him to overcome his perfectionism about presenting the Anthropometer.

Huntington arranged a lecture for him on October 21 at a meeting of the Royce Club (a discussion group named in honor of Josiah Royce), which met at the Harvard Club of Boston. Alfred got a room there and prepared for the talk by giving a more informal presentation at Huntington’s home “before [Huntington], [mathematician George] Birkoff and a few other friends.”(42) Then, before the Royce Club meeting, William Morton Wheeler had a dinner in his home for Korzybski where Alfred met Dr. David G. Fairchild, a close friend of Wheeler and head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Introduction Service. Both Wheeler and Fairchild went with Alfred to his formal lecture; so in effect, with Alfred’s dinner table warm-up, they heard his presentation twice. They both seemed impressed. Alfred noticed that “Wheeler was already explaining the Anthropometer to others VERY WELL” at dinner.(43) At Korzybski’s lecture, as he wrote to R. D. Carmichael,

…I went to the end of my rope, summing up “everything under the sun” merging physics and metaphysics (to the detriment of the last), and ending the whole logical SYSTEM with the law of conservation of energy! The reception was generally favorable. When I was driving home some of the very difficult (because unusual) points, a young man in my audience shouted, “that’s true.” I was astonished, because I was prepared that many would say just the opposite. Of course, I kept my eye on the fellow. Lately we came together quite a bit, this fellow was [Dr. Tenney L.] Davis [an organic chemist and historian of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology].(44)  

Davis had wide-ranging interests. He later wrote a classic textbook on pyrotechnics and explosives and became well known as a historian of chemistry and translator of the letters of Roger Bacon. He may have been responsible for getting Alfred his second academic speaking engagement in the area, a talk at the MIT Math Club on Saturday, October 26. An advertising poster for his talk on “The Anthropometer or The Time-Binding Differential” was prepared for display around campus. A small article in the October 26 daily student newspaper, The Tech, announced the event with this depiction of Alfred: “Count Korzybski is a mathematician although he does not deal in x’s and y’s but uses words and thoughts.”(45) 

Poster for Korzybski's 1923 talk at MIT Math Club,
from AKDA 3.207

Alfred left for New York by himself the following day (Mira was finishing up some business in Boston and would return in mid-November). Back at work at his desk in the studio on Grove Street, he could contemplate good news about his work. For one thing, he was continuing to get newspaper and magazine publicity. Among other periodicals, Know Thyself, a new ‘free-thinkers’ magazine, edited by Alfred’s friend William J. Fielding, had an interview with him in its October issue and was planning to reprint “Fate and Freedom”. The Professional Engineer was publishing an excerpt from “Fate and Freedom” in its November issue. In Boston, after he left, the MIT Tech had published a second article on Alfred’s talk there, while both the Boston Evening Transcript and the Boston Sunday Globe printed interviews with him. But for Alfred, even more important than newspaper and magazine articles was the recognition of his work by mathematicians and scientists like Huntington, Wheeler, Fairchild, and Davis.

Alfred knew he had ‘snared’ David Fairchild when he got a letter from him early in November with an invitation to come down to Washington, D.C. to speak: “…I am very interested in your revolutionary theories and want my friends to hear them.”(46)  Alfred agreed to come and Fairchild arranged a lecture for him at the Cosmo Club on December 10. (Fairchild’s enthusiasm may be indicated by the fact that he not only arranged for Alfred and Mira’s expenses to be paid, but that he also covered the cost of producing and distributing 2000 copies of a circular advertising the event.)

When Mira returned from Boston (around November 18), she and Alfred had much to do before their trip to Washington. The Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had each acquired a painting of hers for their collections. She was getting more publicity about her work and would do what she could to capitalize on it. She had a talk and painting exhibition scheduled on December 4 at the Art Center in New York City.

On December 5, Alfred spoke at the monthly meeting of the New York Psychiatric Society. He had become friendly with one of the group’s members, Dr. Stewart Paton, and was eager to establish contacts with other people in the group, like Smith Ely Jeliffe, the editor of the The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Since he had read the Mental Hygiene review of Manhood over a year before, Alfred had been reading widely in the neurology and psychiatry literature. Although he had so far focused most of his attention on the ‘thinking’ processes occurring in the exact sciences, he had come to realize that he now had to understand the ‘thinking’ processes involved in psychiatric disorders. He knew he could learn from psychiatrists and thought that, with the Anthropometer and his formulation of logical fate, he had some things which might have practical use for psychiatrists as well.

His book now had a sharper focus under the title The Anthropometer, World Peace, and Modern Science. He no long felt he had to produce a lengthy work on epistemology (since Cassirer had done that). Perhaps he could keep it relatively short. He would soon change his view about both of these things and abandon the title. But for now, the theme of the title and what he had written about it so far, would serve as the nucleus of his talks at both the psychiatric society and the Cosmo Club.

As was usual before they traveled, the day before going to Washington was a mad rush. When Mira had returned to New York in mid-November they had gotten rooms at the Grenoble again but Alfred had kept the Grove Street studio. Now, besides packing for their trip, they moved all their stuff back to the Grenoble. They took the 1:00 a.m. train from New York, arriving in Washington about six hours later on Monday morning, December 10. Alfred gave his presentation that afternoon to about 200 people at the Cosmo Club, where they stayed that night. The next day, Alfred and Mira went to stay for a couple of days with Fairchild and his wife Marian at their home, “In The Woods” in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a Washington suburb. Marian Fairchild’s father, Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone), had died the previous year at his home at 1331 Connecticut Avenue in Washington. Now, the Fairchilds were closing down the mansion, where Marian’s father had held weekly salons for years. They thought it would be appropriate to have one last gathering there with Alfred giving a talk as a tribute to the memory of her father. That evening Alfred spoke to about 70 friends of the Bells and Fairchilds.

He had not been happy with his New York Psychiatric Society lecture. He had tried to compress too much material into too little time. For his Cosmo Club talk, he purposely decided to limit himself and did not bring out the Anthropometer. But for his lecture at the Bell mansion, he ‘pulled out all the stops’. As he described it later to W.E. Ritter:

…The event was a large beautiful and extremely solemn affair... I lectured in the little private theatre. All the memories, glorious memories were hovering around this evening. I am told that my lecture was the best I ever had. I think that this was true. I spoke for one hour and half, and after I was asked to speak for two half hours more. After, there was a reception. I looked over private papers of old Bell. It seems that he in his prophetic genius foresaw 30 years ago the latest developments. His daughter and Fairchild knowing this decided to make out of it the swan song. It was beautiful and unforgettable. After the lecture Mrs. Fairchild presented me the beloved old ashtray of G. Bell with an inscription: “In this receiver Alexander Graham Bell used to knock the ashes out of his pipe. Presented by his daughter Marion Fairchild to Alfred Korzybski, it passes in time from one cosmic pipe dreamer to another. In memory of the Swan song of 1331 Connecticut Ave. on December 11 — 1923.”(47)

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

38. “Countess Korzybska, Portrait Painter...”. North Shore Breeze and Reminder, August 24 edition. AKDA 3.195. 

39. “Personals - Countess Korzybska Speaks”. Boston Evening Transcript, 10/4/1923. AKDA 3.198. 

40. AK to W. E. Ritter, 11/10/1923. AKDA 13.170. 

41. Ibid. 

42. AK to R.D. Carmichael, 1/23/1924. AKDA 14.450. 

43. AK to W. E. Ritter, 12/29/1923. AKDA 13.43. 

44. AK to R.D. Carmichael, 1/23/1924. AKDA 14.450. 

45. “Count Korzybski Speaks Tonight”. The Tech (MIT Student Newspaper), 10/26/1923. AKDA 3.206. 

46. David Fairchild to AK, 11/8/1923. AKDA 10.175. 

47. AK to W.E. Ritter, 12/29/1923. AKDA 13.43-44.

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Chapter 27 - Measure Of Man: Part 4 - 'A Poke In The Ribs'

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

Through the end of summer, Mira remained out on Long Island painting portraits. For most of that time Alfred was alone—working—in New York City. Occasionally, either Mira would come into the city for a day or two or Alfred would go out to visit her. When together, their conversation might turn to future plans and Poland. Perhaps they could leave for Europe in a few more months, perhaps early in 1924. But not yet. 

First of all, Mira wanted to take whatever opportunities she could to make some money for them. And the opportunities seemed to be multiplying. President Harding had died suddenly in early August after only a little more than two years in office, amidst rumblings of scandal and corruption in his administration. Despite the rumblings, Vice-President “silent” Cal Coolidge had inherited a booming economy as President. The “rotten rich” had begun to again feel comfortable about splurging for portraits at a few thousand dollars apiece. Mira was there to oblige them.

As for Alfred, he wanted to establish his work on a firm basis in the U.S. before leaving. This included marketing Anthropometers to educators and others. To do that, he would need to manufacture more of them. More importantly, to go with it, he would also need to get into print a description of the Anthropometer and an explanation of the theory behind it. This required him to lay aside his plan to write a new introduction to Manhood. He would shift the material he had already written into his next book. But what that book seemed to require at this stage looked rather daunting. Before writing about the Anthropometer, he felt he first had to write something sizable on the fundamentals of methodology and epistemology.(33) 

Meanwhile he continued sending out “Fate and Freedom” reprints to people who had either expressed an interest in his work or whom he thought would have an interest. He was getting a lot of positive responses from people who had already read it. He had been corresponding for two years with Lockwood de Forest II, a well-known designer and landscape painter living in Santa Barbara, California, who had originally sent Alfred a ‘fan letter’ after reading Manhood of Humanity. De Forest wrote to Alfred on August 16 thanking him for the new reprint, requesting two more to give out, and making the following observation:

It is very curious how everything you say coincides with conclusions I have come to. I seem to have got at them from an entirely different viewpoint [as a painter and designer]. It is quite impossible to put ideas into words as in trying to do it they lose their force. Until we can discover some way in which they can be made into bullets, preferably dum dum bullets which explode inside, and shot from the best rapid fire guns, or better still lightning they will not have their full effect which should be instantaneous.…No idea or machine or tool or anything else is of any real benefit to human beings until they appropriate it and use it and make it part of themselves.…nothing can ever be quite clear until you can visualize it. That I think is why your work is so important. Man has to be studied as a whole, a living, vital, moving being. Is not the reason why he has never got any understanding as you state it because he has only been studying himself in parts[?] (34)

This certainly struck a bell with Korzybski who wrote back on August 22:

Dear Mr. De Forest, Your kind letter at hand many thanks for the friendly attitude toward “Fate and Freedom”…Once more you are right as to the words, your expression “Until we can discover some way in which they can be made into bullets, preferably dum dum bullets which explode inside etc etc” may prove to be prophetic. I have just succeeded in making such a machine gun, it is made of mahogany, ebony, brass and parchment [the Anthropometer]…(35) 

At de Forest’s request, Alfred sent a copy of “Fate and Freedom” to one of de Forest’s son’s, Alfred V. de Forest, an engineer who would soon become famous in engineering circles as one of the pioneers of non-destructive materials testing. A. V. de Forest, then working for the American Chain Company, wrote back to Korzybski with delight. He was one of many people who were finding encouragement in Alfred’s work for their own innovative thinking: “I am very glad indeed to have your interesting paper….I have long thought that your questioning of premises might be very profitably applied to our engineering use of materials of construction.” De Forest pointed out the confusion of dimensions then prevalent in this area:

It is even customary to specify steel in terms of chemical analysis when the mechanical behavior is the only subject of interest. We are quite as confused as though we hired stenographers by their height and paid them according to their weight...As you point out, our definition of steel as dead leads to testing it as though it were dead, and that destroys all possibility of measuring its dynamic reactions and hidden possibilities. (36)

Such responses to his work encouraged Alfred. They fueled his desire to get on with his book. If he required additional fuel, he got it with the latest news from Walter. Early in August, Robert S. Gill, an editor with the Baltimore publishing house of Williams and Wilkins, had contacted Polakov after reading one of his “Science and Labor” articles in The American Labor Monthly. Gill had also just read Manhood of Humanity with “keen interest”. He wanted to know if the Time-Binding Club, which he had seen mentioned in the book, was still meeting. (It wasn’t.) He also wanted to know if Polakov had any manuscripts on Human Engineering available for Williams and Wilkins to consider. Walter mentioned Alfred’s new work and went into more detail about his own two book projects on the “new line of thought”. One more popularly-oriented book had the preliminary title “Observing the Observer”. Another more technical book called “Engineering as a Whole” would be oriented towards engineers and businessmen. Polakov invited Gill to New York for a meeting.

A few days later, Gill came to meet Walter and Alfred. The meeting lasted several hours and led to positive results for the two friends. Alfred didn’t push his new book much (just mentioning it in passing) but showed the Anthropometer to Gill, who seemed enthusiastic. When Gill got back to Baltimore he wrote to Korzybski asking if he would consider submitting his upcoming manuscript to Williams and Wilkins.(37) Since Dutton had an option on Korzybski’s next book, Alfred politely deferred an acceptance. The result for Polakov was more definite. Gill would take up Walter’s project “Observing the Observer”, which became Man and his Affairs: From the Engineering Point of View, published by Williams and Wilkins in January 1925. (“Observing the Observer” became the title of the book’s first chapter.) Walter got to work on it at once and by the end of the month had material for Alfred to edit, which Alfred did quite carefully. He and Keyser would both continue to work with Polakov on the manuscript into the following year.

Man and his Affairs, the first book presenting Korzybski’s post-Manhood work, was published more than eight years before Korzybski’s Science and Sanity. When the book came out, Walter sent Alfred and Mira a copy inscribed:

To my very dear Alfred and Myra—this ‘second generation’ of Manhood of Humanity is an inadequate token of my love and devotion
  Walter...New York...Jan. 1925

Alfred wrote back to Walter his heartfelt opinion: “…the book is really fine.” He really meant it. Alfred knew how much devotion Walter had for him and his work. Despite Polakov’s moods, Alfred loved him like a brother. There was no question Walter had imbibed a lot of inspiration from Korzybski. But Walter knew it and gave Alfred credit—although he had also incorporated much of Alfred’s formulating as his own. Alfred did not begrudge him that. As time went on, Korzybski would observe that he had such an inspirational effect on others who might not have much or any consciousness of it. In the late summer/early fall of 1923, the fact that Polakov was charging ahead with this new book, and the likelihood he would get it published before Alfred’s, must at the least have given Alfred a ‘poke in the ribs’ to keep working. When Polakov’s book finally appeared it probably gave Alfred another ‘poke’. As he had already told Walter, he did not want to be considered a plagiarist because others expressed his own original ideas in print before he did.

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

33. AK to R.D. Carmichael, 1/23/1924. AKDA 14.450. 

34. Lockwood de Forest to AK, 8/16/1923. AKDA 10.47–45. 

35. AK to Lockwood de Forest II, 8/22/1923. AKDA 13.271. 

36. A. V. de Forest to AK, 8/28/1923. AKDA 10.67. 

37. Robert S. Gill to AK, 8/10/1923. AKDA 10.29. 

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Chapter 27 - Measure of Man: Part 3 - An Educational Appliance

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

Alfred had also been working on a new patent application. Soon after the May 18 talk he had decided it would be worthwhile to make a standing model of the diagram. He gathered together fiber discs, aluminum discs, gold nibs, brass castings, and violin pegs—among other materials—and by the end of June had constructed his first model. Having had some experience with patents, he got an attorney and prepared papers for the patent office with mechanical drawings of front and side elevation views. Patent application number 649,344 was filed on July 6, 1923. The beginning of an early draft of Korzybski’s application reads as follows:

To all whom it may concern: 

Be it known that I, Alfred Korzybski, a citizen of Poland, residing in New York City, State of New York with postal address Fifth Avenue Bank New York City, have invented a new useful educational implement (instrument) called the Anthropometer or Time-binding Differential for the demonstration of: 

1) the working of the human mind and differentiating it from the parallel but inherently different working of the animal nervous and brain systems;  

2) the mechanism of building up of abstractions of higher and higher orders, the numbers of possible selections of which grow according to the laws of mathematical combinations of higher order, and therefore grow extremely rapidly; 

3) the mechanism and structure of human language;  

4) the fundamentals of the theory of relativity of universal human interest and of extreme practical importance, showing clearly that “reality” which is made up of “events” is in fact made up of “matter,” “space,” and “time” indivisibly connected and can not be divided except by a mental process of abstraction, which mean[s], the emphasis of some aspects and the disregard of the others, although they are, all three, ever indivisibly present;  

5) that “absolutism” which means the absence of the consciousness of abstracting is a necessary and sufficient condition for non-critical imitating of the animals and the result of the same animalistic false beliefs; 

6) that [the] human mind, if it works true to its natural laws must have the “relativity point of view” which is attained only and exclusively by the consciousness of abstracting, which becomes self evident when demonstrated by this Anthropometer;  

(7) that if we are not conscious continuously of abstracting (as a matter of fact we actually do abstract all the time and cannot do anything else) we unconsciously falsely believe that our words, names or labels cover all the characteristics of the object (which they do not) and that the characteristics of the object are the same in number and quality as the characteristics of the event (which they are not) and then of course we are and must be absolutists and identify our labels or words with objects, and objects with events, otherwise [in other words] do not differentiate between them, exactly as the animals do;  

8) that with the consciousness of abstracting the human mind works as human (not animal) and that it must take the relativist’s point of view, by dealing with abstractions as abstractions, and not as with physical, independent, existing entities, which they never are, and never “objectify” labels and symbols, which is a vicious creed, false to facts; 

9) that with this consciousness of abstracting all fundamental reasons for disagreement among men vanish, and universal agreement in all problems becomes possible, just as universal agreement has been reached in this way in mathematics, or in the theory of relativity, the formulation of the laws of the universe in an invariant form, for all observers the same. (21)

Mechanical Drawing of Anthropometer
submitted with Korzybski's patent application

Korzybski had called his device the “Anthropometer” (measure of man) or “Time-Binding Differential” because it showed what he considered the defining difference between animals and humans. Although it didn’t numerically measure anything it did provide a qualitative standard for a person to evaluate his own ‘thinking’ and that of others. The model had an advantage over a simple diagram because it was not only visible but could be touched and handled repeatedly. Korzybski affirmed that people needed to do this to—quite literally— ‘get a feel’ for his ‘ideas’. On the advice of his patent lawyers, he later somewhat revised his opening description. The patent declaration issued two years later, didn’t even mention the names he had chosen for the device. There, Korzybski’s invention was simply referred to as an “Educational Appliance”.(22)  

With the Anthropometer, Alfred now had a more intense and specific focus for human engineering. Along with the accompanying book he planned to write, he could see that the Anthropometer might eventually serve as his and Mira’s entryway to a decent income from the theoretical work he had been doing. Teaching the basics of correct human symbolism with the appliance (and the logical fate diagram) would be useful anywhere humans make symbols and “talky-talk”. The practical side of his work was now emerging more clearly. It involved in part, extending ordinary language use and ways of ‘thought’; deriving methods and insights from various aspects of mathematics and science to help people become aware of their own roles as observers, symbolizers, ‘thinkers’. Common people needed it. He knew that scientists surely did.(23)

But Alfred felt practical applications would depend on his further exploration of the “relativist” orientation to human knowledge that the Anthropometer symbolized. It had emerged not only as a flash but as a whole, a visual icon for the system he had been preparing and incubating unconsciously for some time out of “scattered bits of knowledge” from various fields. With his last two papers he had been trying to put the system, a deductive framework for a science of man, into conscious, verbal form. He was already starting to see new relationships as a result of exploring the non-verbal diagram. (He knew how much it had helped him and later promoted visualization to his students as a beneficial, non-linguistic form of representation.) But he could see there were serious scientific theoretical issues he would have to address before he could feel comfortable presenting the Anthropometer to the scientific world.(24) 

The subsequent career of the Anthropometer (by the time he published Science and Sanity, he was calling it the “Structural Differential”) in a sense covers the rest of Korzybski’s work. The Anthropometer would continue to serve as one of Korzybski’s major ‘weapons’ in his subsequent career as an epistemological knight-errant. He now had, as never before, a significant clarity about his quest. He would search the worlds of knowledge (relativity and quantum theory, colloidal chemistry, neurology, mathematics and mathematical logic, psychiatry, etc.) for whatever he could glean about how humans know what they think they know. The Anthropometer (Structural Differential) would supply his main framework for organizing this knowledge about knowledge. And its practical purpose in getting people to apply this knowledge fueled his urgency to develop other devices, methods, examples, etc., for encouraging what he had started to call “consciousness of abstracting”.

Over the next ten to fifteen years, Alfred put a fair amount of effort into building Anthropometers/Structural Differentials, even obtaining a small lathe to build parts. He had experimented with making round models—with a parabola-shaped bowl on top and a spherical object level—but those he produced commercially he made flat. Beautifully crafted from mahogany, they came in different sizes and designs—a desk version, a slightly larger office model, and a school set.(25)  He sold some and gave away a number to friends and associates.

In manufacturing them, of course,…I spent endless time and money on producing them. Stupidly. I have to grant that. The price of the differential, I put up about $20, but the actual cost of the differential to me was about $75 apiece. Stupidity, granted, but I cannot help it, and then decided, I spent some months brooding over them trying to find out improvements and further elaborations and this kind of stuff. (26) 

In the final patent application he had written that,

… “reality” is made up in the rough of conglomerations of electricity in a permanent extremely complicated motion…an ever changing dance of electrons, which, as such, cannot be visually recognized. This something which we cannot recognize is called the “event”…[represented by the parabola with its broken-off top to represent its endless, indefinite extent with an infinity of characteristics.] (27)

It seemed to Alfred that the speeding blades of a rotary fan provided a good visual analogy of how we abstract/create our object-level perceptions from out of this “mad-dance”. Imagine that the non-rotating blades of the fan represent the actual process world. With the motor turning, we no longer see the blades but see a disk. In our general experience, we never see the ‘blades’, i.e., the electrons, etc., posited in physics explanations of the underlying ‘reality’ of objects. Everything we experience, we experience as a “a disk where there is no disk”—a phrase Alfred often later used with his students.

Alfred soon began using this example to explain our object-level experience as “a “joint phenomenon” of the rotating blades and our abstracting organism.”(28) Within the next few years, he built for himself a ‘deluxe’ three-dimensional differential on a standing base, which was housed in a specially-made suitcase. Just below the differential, he placed a motorized fan which made it convenient to illustrate the ‘disk where there is no disk’. (A friend of his at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. even gilded the blades.) When he went for a visit to Poland in 1929, he took this deluxe differential with him and left it in his mother’s apartment where it was eventually lost during World War II.

Korzybski with 'deluxe, '3-D' model of Anthropometer
with the rotary fan, the 'disk' where there is no disk, around 1927

After the Institute of General Semantics was founded, Alfred had little time to manufacture additional differentials. Soon afterwards they were no longer available for sale. Eventually, in October 1949, the Institute made available sturdy scrolling wall-charts of the diagram lithographed by the Rand McNally Company on heavy linen map stock. By this time, Korzybski had begun to teach about the process of abstracting in another form, a diagram which made the process—not the product—of abstracting more explicit (to be discussed in more detail later.) Nonetheless, for Korzybski, the Anthropometer/Structural Differential remained an indispensable teaching tool.

For Korzybski ‘intellectual’ understanding of abstracting was not sufficient. Over the years, those who found the educational appliance most useful were those who actually used it—keeping it in front of them—to take any problem and ‘put it up on the differential’. Those inclined to accept ‘intellectual’ (mostly verbal) understanding as sufficient were likely to consider such ‘pains’ unnecessary. For them the parts of Korzybski’s work which they considered sound consisted of well-known ‘platitudes’ which—as Korzybski often observed—they didn’t practice. For him, humankind’s problems derived not so much from lack of knowledge, but rather from failure to make use of what was already known.

Korzybski got his patent for the Anthropometer on May 26, 1925. But it didn’t come easily. After initial perusal, the patent office refused to consider the application further. Someone there had decided that since the Anthropometer used perforated discs and pegs, it had already been invented. It seems that some milkmen (drivers who brought milk and dairy products door-to-door to people’s homes) used a system of pegs set in perforated discs to record where they had made their deliveries. The stupidity of identifying the Anthropometer with this milk-delivery record-keeping system flummoxed Korzybski. But it provided a good example of the kind of rotten thinking his device was supposed to remedy. His lawyers didn’t respond to this news to Alfred’s satisfaction. As a result he took it upon himself to write a blunt letter of protest to the patent office, which seemed to get the application back on track.(29)  

By mid-July 1923, Mira had gone out to stay on Long Island where she had gotten some work. Alfred didn’t need the entire two-room suite at the Grenoble so he moved to a smaller apartment on Grove Street in Greenwich Village.(30) Around this time, he finally got the “Fate and Freedom” reprints. He put together a mailing list and began sending copies of the lecture to friends and correspondents and at least alluding to his invention/discovery in his letters. In spite of the delays in writing, in getting to Poland, etc., his recent insight and achievement filled him with enthusiasm. With those people to whom he could do so, he looked for opportunities to explain the Anthropometer in more detail face-to-face. This was not just a function of some difficulty he might have had in containing his enthusiasm for his just-completed model. Alfred knew he had reached a new level in the development of his work. He genuinely wanted to know how people reacted to his presentation of it. How much use did the Anthropometer actually have as an educational appliance?

He described the general results of his teaching experiments to a number of people on his list. For example, in a letter to Edward McKernan, a superintendent at the Associated Press in New York, he wrote:

Lately I have discovered a most shocking fact, that until this day even in our thinking processes we try to copy the dogs, pigs or monkeys, of course man not knowing HOW to think hates thinking, if shown in what HUMAN thought consists thinking becomes a pleasure. I tried it out on children and negroes, the change is complete in a very few hours. (31) 

However patronizing this may seem to some present-day readers, did Korzybski’s comment indicate racism? Probably not. Korzybski wouldn’t have bothered trying out the Anthropometer on “negroes” if he didn’t consider them fully human. However, in 1923 he apparently associated “negroes” with a lack of education. Korzybski probably had no exposure to black people in pre-World War I Poland, and had for the most part, up until 1923, met only ‘uneducated’ ones in the United States.(32) Of course, ‘uneducated’ black folks had come up with the story of the “tar baby” which beautifully illustrated the traps in store for those who confuse levels of abstraction (see Julius Lester’s Uncle Remus: The Complete Tales). And Korzybski had already encountered highly educated scientists and others who, outside of their fields (or even within their fields), could demonstrate a great deal of such confusion. He would continue to meet plenty of such ‘educated’ people.

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

21. Korzybski Patent Application. AKDA 35.602. 

22. See “Patent Application”, Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, pp. 31-38. 

23. AK to C. J. Keyser, 7/14/1923. AKDA 13.422. 

24. AK to Adolf Meyer, 12/29/1923. AKDA 13.35; AK to Stewart Paton, 1/7/1924. AKDA 13.31. 

25. Anthropometer Accounts, AK Notebook. AKDA 37.837-838. 

26. Korzybski 1947, pp. 309-310. 

27. AKDA 35.591. 

28. “Time-Binding: The General Theory (First Paper)” in Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, p. 68. 

29. Korzybski 1947, p. 2. 

30. AKDA 13.380. 

31. AK to Edward McKernan, 8/4/1923. AKDA 13.342. 

32. Korzybski later wrote about the “white race” as what he mainly knew; what he said about it seems mainly uncomplimentary. See Science and Sanity, pp. 302, 304. 

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Chapter 27 - Measure of Man: Part 2 - "As A Flash..."

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

In April, Walter Polakov had addressed a joint conference of university students and union representatives in Philadelphia. A report of the meeting and of Polakov’s talk was given in the May 5 issue of The New Student, a national bi-weekly newspaper published in New York City by the National Student Forum, a liberal student organization. Probably as a result of the interest engendered from this talk, the Students Cooperative Association at the New School for Social Research asked Polakov, Korzybski, and friends to give a series of four talks on “Human Engineering” at the main Auditorium on West 23rd Street on successive Friday evenings in May. On May 4, Polakov had spoken on “Engineering as a Whole”. The May 11 talk featured C. B. Bridges on “Biological Aspects of Human Engineering”. Korzybski was scheduled for May 18 to talk on “Relativist Aspects of Human Engineering”. Finally, Charles Wood’s May 25 talk would wrap things up with his intriguingly titled “Witchcraft and Human Engineering”. (4) 

Poster for 1923 New School Talks on Human Engineering (AKDA 3.184)

John Dewey and some other Columbia University professors founded the New School in 1919 to create a forum for the kind of ‘progressive’ adult education and social science research they felt they couldn’t do at Columbia. Behaviorist psychologist John B. Watson, recently resigned from Johns Hopkins University and now a New York advertising executive, was one of the lecturers there in the spring of 1923 when Alfred was scheduled to speak. As far as Korzybski knew, the New School had become a “hotbed” for the views of both Watson and Dewey. Familiar with the work of both men, he anticipated a hostile reception.

As far as he knew neither man cared much for his views. Frankly, he didn’t care much for theirs either. Alfred considered Dewey’s philosophy okay but of limited value because of what he viewed as Dewey’s relative lack of knowledge in science and mathematics. As for Watson, his behaviorism seemed exceedingly narrow. Psychology in Watson’s view “must discard all reference to consciousness”.(5) Korzybski—who did not reject the fact or the data of introspection—felt any formulation of human behavior that did so, must itself be discarded as extreme. Watson had written, “Thought can be safely left to take care of itself when safe methods of regulating behavior can be obtained. What a man thinks is only a reflection of what he does.”(6) Thinking thusly, how could Watson or his followers have any use for the notion of “logical fate”? Still, Alfred wanted to succeed with what he considered an otherwise fine student and faculty audience. He felt extremely nervous about his talk.

An extra burden resulted from a ‘little’ conflict which had developed between him and Polakov. Since the previous fall, Walter had been very busy writing. First, he had completed a draft of a book, Life and Work (never published) built from some of his previous lectures and articles. Then, in December The Call had published his review of Mathematical Philosophy. In April a new journal, The American Labor Monthly, had been launched and featured the first of a series of four articles by Polakov on “Science and Labor”. All of the articles in the series, completed in the October issue, showed Polakov’s debt to Korzybski, but there was no question they had resulted from Walter’s own ruminations, not only on Alfred’s work but also on the material in mathematics, biology, and psychiatry he had been studying along with Korzybski. Alfred had recommended the April article to others.

That could not be said for an article by Walter in the May 1923 issue of Management Engineering entitled, “The Foundation of Human Engineering: Language and The New Mathematical Logic”.(7) Polakov had been asked by the editor to write it and had agreed on condition that he and Alfred produce it under joint authorship. The editor seemed to have some prejudice against Korzybski and refused. Alfred and Walter agreed that Walter would publish a shortened, somewhat edited and reworded version of “Fate and Freedom” under Walter’s name.(8) Even so, most of the references to Alfred’s name were left out by the editor. Having seen this in print, Alfred seems to have had second thoughts about it. Especially since “Fate and Freedom” had not yet been published in The Mathematics Teacher. (That May edition of the journal would come out late partly due to a hold-up in the copyediting of Alfred’s lecture text.)

Meanwhile, a second article by Walter for Management Engineering was in the works. On the Tuesday of the week of Alfred’s Friday lecture, Walter had been on a consulting job in Massachusetts but had written a quick note to Alfred. He told Alfred he planned to attend the talk and also referred to this “carbon of a second paper for Management Engineering”(9) that he had sent and which he wanted Alfred to correct as soon as possible. Walter apologetically noted to Alfred that he had referred to Alfred’s book and article in three places in the article but that the references and quotation marks had again been removed by the editor. Walter had complained.(10) The next day, Alfred wrote to him:

My dear Poly:
Received your letter from Mass. I am very glad that you may be able to attend my lecture. Until now I did not receive the carbon copy of your new article. There is one point I would like that you would insist upon the publisher namely that he should not omit this time your references to my work, I am convinced that if you see him personally or write to him he would abide to your request. It is very disagreeable for both of us if you publish first some of my work and then people will take me for a plagiator of my own work after I publish it next. This label business refer please to “The new introduction to Manhood of Humanity by A.K.” “Dutton and Co.” I write because you may be late and send the MS. [of the article] before we see each other. Love from both. (11) 

Perhaps this letter provided the trigger for an angry outburst by Walter a few days later. When Alfred got to the New School Auditorium for his talk on the evening of May 18, about 150 people were in the audience. Walter was there too—and in a fit of rage. A few minutes before the lecture, he began cursing and yelling at Alfred: He had helped Alfred with publicity and Alfred had treated him badly in return, Alfred had not helped him with reviews of his book, etc., etc.

Alfred tried to appease him (which he later regretted), speaking to him in Russian and hoping to get him to at least stop yelling in English.(12) But Walter wouldn’t stop. Alfred was getting upset himself. If this had been only a few years earlier in Poland, he would have slapped his friend and challenged him to a duel. But as he told Ralph Hamilton years later, “I had to glue my teeth.” He went up to the speaker’s platform, trembling.(13)

…So I was quite unhappy and very tense. It’s one of the few instances of my life when I was genuinely disturbed and very, very tense. I delivered my lecture to make good in a hostile stronghold, important, which I had to, sort of, say conquer, persuade, and what not, and then that personal issue of that exceedingly, sharp, personal maladjustment of [Polakov]…(14)  

…I was very eager to make good to that particular class in spite of Dewey and Watson, and I was eager to convey the difference between the reaction of man and dogs, cats, and so on, what are usually called ‘animals’. I was struggling with myself how to convey that fundamental difference, and somehow under that stress, pressure, of necessity—I would even use the word ‘emotional stress’—of conveying what I wanted to convey, as a flash, a diagram occurred to me,…(15) 

…when I began to explain, that the process [event] level has indefinitely many characteristics that we don’t know, it came in a flash. In a flash—I drew a parabola on the blackboard, and I explained that this parabola represents the process with its characteristics [represented by dots or holes within the parabola], extending without limit. And what we perceive is limited.(16) 

Below the parabola, he drew a circle, which represented any object we perceive (including not just ‘things’ but anything experienced, even a bang on the knees or a toothache). And below that, he drew a figure of a label—like the ones attached to suitcases or trunks—to indicate the label (name) for the object or a description of the object. Another label drawn below this could be used to indicate a statement about the first statement, and the process could go on indefinitely. His drawing was simple with little elaboration. Each level represented an abstraction from the one above it, with some lines drawn from the parabola to the circle to the label to indicate the process of abstracting. To the side, he drew another unattached circle to indicate the “animal object”. Animals also had first-order experiences (objects) but they couldn’t talk about them. As Korzybski later reported on the event:

I made the diagram on the blackboard, offhand,…to show the difference between animal and man. I was driving at time-binding. As a matter of fact, the whole of the future of GS [General Semantics] was already based on that diagram...[T]he lecture was successful. I carried my point, the difference between the reaction of a dog and the reaction of a Humpty Dumpty…When I came home and began to think about the whole problem, I began to realize more and more because my whole outlook which I already had inside of me was summarized in the most exact way in terms of [the diagram]...(17)

The diagram showed the mechanism of time-binding in its starkest, ideal form. Every individual (animal or human) gathers first-order, object level experiences. But unlike a cat or dog, which has a limited ability to convey its experience to another cat or dog, a human’s world is not restricted to the circle in the diagram—the object (or objective) level. A human can communicate his experience verbally or otherwise symbolically to the other fellow. The diagram showed the pitfalls of the communication process. Problems occurred when people failed to recognize, or confused, the levels. It wasn’t enough to just accept the definition of man as a time-binder. To adequately function as a time-binder, one had to stop copying animals by such confused thinking. 

'3-D' Animal Object, Event, Object, and Label

The diagram could be used as a tool to help bring human thinking to the human level. A person could keep it in front of himself as a reference to help distinguish the levels when dealing with any problem (A statement about a descriptive statement—an inference—is not the descriptive statement; a label or description of an object is not the object; the object is not the invisible, inferred process; etc.) In order to time-bind most effectively, a person had to understand and use the mechanism correctly by recognizing and distinguishing the levels or orders in any situation. This was not a statistical approach to a science of man but one based on human potentiality.

Alfred felt overwhelmed. In some of his letters, he described his state for the next month as feeling literally ill, as if he had been knocked over by a formulational ‘tsunami’. The implications of the diagram seemed endless. It brought together Russell’s types with Royce’s self-reflexive mapping with Whitehead’s physico-mathematical theory of events and objects with relativity with organism-as-a-whole biology with logical fate, among other formulations. It seemed to show in an astonishingly simple way “the foundation on which all rational human activities are based.”(18) 

However overwhelmed he may have felt, he remained busy. The following week he attended Wood’s talk on “Witchcraft and Human Engineering”. He wrote to Wood, Bridges, and Polakov (with whom he seems to have patched up relations) about the possibility of getting their New School presentations into written shape for publication in a book on Human Engineering. (Although they probably met to discuss this, it never got beyond the planning stage.) Alfred was also invited back to the New School a couple of weeks later to give another talk. Later in June he gave presentations on “Fate and Freedom” in New York City at the Culture Forum and at the University Forum of America.

He had hoped to be able to have some copies of “Fate and Freedom” available at his lectures. The article had been scheduled for the May edition of The Mathematics Teacher. But he had only gotten the galley proofs on May 28. He corrected them at once and sent them back to the printer that day with a request for 1000 reprints, which he hoped to get quickly since he was running out of his “Brotherhood” reprints. But there was more delay from the printer and he didn’t get them until mid-July.(19)

Besides his lectures, Korzybski also kept busy writing. He was now trying to integrate the new material related to the diagram into the new introduction to Manhood. He felt frustrated. It was not a question of ‘writer’s block’. He was quite capable of ‘spitting things out’ on paper. But coming up with something he found acceptable was another thing entirely. He wrote to Walter about his frustration:
…I wonder if you ever are jealous of anyone. I must admit that I am sometimes a little jealous of the easiness with which you write. That’s something which is apparently beyond me. I takes me years to write something and even then I find it often to be not correct. This is again the case with me now. Probably no one can accuse me of being lazy. I work 18 hours a day, yet I progress very slowly. I am still rewriting what I have already written and rewritten several times. The times are so pressing and we are in such a hurry to finish the work we began that we push, push without respite, it is the same old story with us. (20)

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

4. AKDA 3.177. 

5. Watson 1914, p. 7. 

6. Watson 1917, p. 54. 

 7. Polakov, “The Foundation of Human Engineering: Language and The New Mathematical Logic”. Management Engineering, May 1923. AKDA 3.181-18. 

8. AK to C. E. Drayer, 8/16/1923. AKDA 13.284. 

9. W. N. Polakov to AK, 5/15/1923. AKDA 13.538. 

10. W. N. Polakov (correspondence with editor of Management Engineering), AKDA 7.86, 7.87, 7.90. 

11. AK to W. N. Polakov, 5/16/1923. AKDA 13.536. 

12. AK to W. N. Polakov, 5/21/23. AKDA 13.512. 

13. Ralph C. Hamilton to Bruce I. Kodish, letter dated “17 Nov. [20]05” (sent March 8, 2006), p. 9. 

14. Korzybski 1947, p. 308. 

15. “Historical Note on the Structural Differential [1947]”, Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, p. 593. 

16. Ralph C. Hamilton to Bruce I. Kodish, letter dated “17 Nov. [20]05”, p. 9. 

17. Korzybski 1947, p. 310-311. 

18. AK to H. L. Haywood, n.d., probably 7/28/1923. AKDA 13.381.

19. AK to Henry Lane, 7/16/1923. AKDA 13.417. 

20. AK to W. N. Polakov, 6/29/1923. AKDA 13.457.

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Chapter 27 - Measure Of Man: Part 1 - Introduction

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

Keyser had told Alfred about a curious passage he found while browsing through a New Testament at a funeral, a line from Paul’s First Corinthians that especially struck him: 

“For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.” 

The quotation struck Alfred too. He wrote it down in his notebook.(1) It might seem with his inquiry into time-binding and human knowledge, he was trying to put all things under his feet. But if anything appeared certain, it was the impossibility of saying all about anything, let alone ‘everything’. The quote from Paul connected to Russell’s types. It related to the ‘complete’ map of England that Royce had written about. Such a map would have to map itself mapping itself—endlessly. In the new orientation affirmed by Alfred in “The Brotherhood of Doctrines” and “Fate and Freedom”, the observer had to be included in any account of knowledge, another incomplete and endless process, since observers always could step back to observe themselves making their observations, etc. Alfred had this and other issues, i.e., the difference between man and animals, logical fate, etc., incubating in his brain as he worked on some upcoming lectures. 

Henry C. Metcalf who ran “The Bureau of Personnel Management”, an independent educational and consulting firm in New York City, had invited Alfred to speak to a group of businessmen and labor unionists there. On March 29, 1923 Alfred addressed them on the topic of “Fate and Freedom in Personnel Management” and the following week on April 5 on “The Implications and Applications of Man as Time-Binder”. Some snippets from transcriptions of these two extemporaneous talks give a feel for what he wanted to bring to people’s attention and for his down-to-earth manner of address:

…A few people come together and begin to talk. What is the talky-talk? The using of terms, ladies and gentlemen. To start anything we must start with the using of terms. We make a trust; again we talky-talk, using terms. Now let us see the other side. We make a strike; we begin with talky-talk, using terms again. How do revolutions happen? Talky-talk as before, using terms. A war happens. What then? Talky-talk, using terms again. A peace conference when war is over. What happens again? Talky-talk, using terms. All human life is dependent on our talky-talk and therefore we should at least know what we are talking about, and should at least know if our terms carry or if the terms are such that they carry nowhere… The problems of man have to be solved in terms of man…If you get clearly in your head those two terms, what is the term “term” and the term “man”, you have got the key to the solution of human problems. There are plenty of mysteries to men in the universe, but when we go to the bottom of those two terms we have the key to the solution of most of them…What exists in nature are neither objects nor labels. What exists in the universe are only events. What we deal with are objects. What are objects? Abstractions; because you do not consider all characteristics. But we have abstracted a few, and that is what we deal with. We deal with objects which are abstractions, and when we talk we do not deal with objects even, we deal with labels. The whole mess can be boiled down to this; the universe is filled with events, we perceive objects, and we talk in labels. I want to give you the thought that you should take seriously, it is not to be passed over lightly, the mixing of a label with ten characteristics for an object with a million characteristics, and both of them for an event with an infinity of characteristics; it is a ready source of enormous errors, which we all constantly commit…All the sciences of the world are groping in the same direction. Mathematics is in the lead. There is one absolute language for the universe as far as man is concerned, and that is mathematics. Today we have a language in which in an absolute way we can deal with all problems, provided we know how to enlarge the language, to enlarge the method to embrace more subject matter. Einstein’s theory of relativity is the quest for the absolute through the relative…(2)  

…Mathematics does not start any more today with numbers, points, lines, and surfaces; mathematics starts today with a notion, a concept, which is purely logical—the concept of order…(3) 

These examples show how Korzybski had begun to pull together various ‘threads’ of influence into a larger pattern more recognizable in terms of his later work. He would refer to this material again in his talk at the New School for Social Research in mid-May.

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 
1. AK to R.D. Carmichael, 9/20/1922. AKDA 9.70-71; AK Notebook, n.d. AKDA 37.799. Korzybski later quoted the passage in Science and Sanity, p. 753. 

2. Korzybski, “Fate and Freedom in Personnel Management”. AKDA 13.390-395. 

3. Korzybski , “The Implications and Applications of Man as Time-Binder”. AKDA 13.396-401.

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