Chapter 57 - "Release Of Atomic Energy": Part 2 - "Mathematics as a Way of Life"

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.

For several years, Korzybski had been corresponding with Jekuthiel Ginsburg, a mathematician at Yeshiva University in New York City. In 1932, with some mathematician friends, including Cassius Keyser, Ginsburg had founded the journal Scripta Mathematica, devoted to the history and philosophy of mathematics with an extra emphasis on humanistic and educational aspects of the discipline. Ginsburg had a special interest in conveying the excitement of mathematics to beginning students and non-mathematicians.(3) He was known for addressing such groups by asking each audience member to take an 81/2 by 11 inch piece of paper and use a scissors to cut a hole in it big enough to pass a piano through. (By the end of the session he would demonstrate how to do it.)(4) 

Scripta Mathematica became known for its articles geared to a general audience. Ginsburg had probably met Korzybski through Keyser, and in late 1944 invited Korzybski to lecture to the Friends of Scripta Mathematica group on January 31 and February 1 at the Horace Mann Auditorium at Columbia University’s Teachers College. For Korzybski, his two lectures on “Mathematics as a Way of Life” gave him an opportunity to return to some of the core issues which had originally inspired him. He gave a summary of his work geared to the group of mathematicians and mathematics educators and interested laypersons who attended. They received him with polite interest, even enthusiasm. 

One of those listeners, Edward Kasner—Keyser’s successor as Adrain Professor of Mathematics at Columbia—had long admired Korzybski and his work, starting with Manhood of Humanity. Kasner had already served for several years as an Honorary Trustee of the IGS. He considered Korzybski a “gifted” thinker of “keen intellect” and “broad humanitarian interest.”(5) Korzybski, in turn, had loved Kasner’s 1940 book Mathematics and the Imagination (written with James Newman), which he recommended highly to his seminar students.

I haven’t found any copies of Korzybski’s 1945 lectures but some notion of what he talked about can be gathered from a letter he wrote to Kasner several months later. Some people would continue to think Korzybski was advocating some complicated plan to get people to ‘talk in mathematical logic’, and thus to convert everyday speech into some kind of formal and esoteric jargon. But, as he wrote to Kasner, what Korzybski was proposing as ‘the mathematical way of life’ had little if anything to do with the formal side of mathematics:

In this connection I feel like quoting Herman Weyl from his ‘Mathematical Way of Thinking’ published in SCIENCE of November 15, 1940...: ‘Indeed, the first difficulty the man in the street encounters when he is taught to think mathematically is that he must learn to look things much more squarely in the face; his belief in words must be shattered; he must learn to think more concretely.’  

Here I would introduce a fundamental correction: Instead of saying ‘more concretely’ it should be said ‘in terms of facts’. This is a serious correction because our ‘feelings’, ‘imaginations’, etc., are matters of facts yet they hardly could be called ‘concrete’. (6)

For Korzybski, ‘thinking’ in terms of facts was closely connected with the human capacity to generate numbers. The modus operandi of the non-aristotelian orientation boiled down to practices as ‘simple’ as using the extensional devices which he had taken for the most part directly from mathematical notation. Their apparent simplicity was deceptive. Even for those who saw the mathematical connection, it was much more difficult to actually use these ‘simple’ devices in daily life—even for mathematicians.

...Hardly anybody could admire your work and the works of men like Einstein, Weyl, and others, more than I do. But, frankly speaking, these works do not give a modus operandi for how to bring about the wisdom you formulate on the level of elementary education. (7) 

A highlight of his Scripta lectures for Korzybski was seeing Keyser face to face after many years apart (although the two men had continued to correspond). In a letter to Keyser later that year, Korzybski wrote:

...Yes, dear Dear Old Man, years are going on, and you and I are still not going into the second childhood. We still are struggling, so far for the good.  

I hardly can tell you how I enjoyed seeing you in New York after years and years of absence. I must admit that I was amused when you were still shy of my hugging you and giving you a kiss. 

Hell with your shyness; any time I would see you I would hug you and kiss you and give you my love, no matter what kind of violet you will play. Tell your lady she should not be jealous, as I am only an old man. Give to her our best. (8) 

Korzybski remained in New York City to give a seminar at the New York University Faculty Club from February 3 to 14. It went very well. As he wrote to Kasner, “It was a fine and lovely group of around fifty-five students, mature, mostly professional. They were very receptive, and because of it, my delivery was unusually satisfactory, as I hear.”(9) Some of the participants had formed a New York Society for General Semantics. Eleanor Wolff and the other organizers of the group got Major Irving J. Lee, then in New York, to lecture to them after Korzybski left. A few months later, they sent $300, the receipts from Lee’s lecture course, as a contribution to the Institute.

February 1945, New York University, Korzybski and Kendig standing.

In the spring of 1945, world developments certainly seemed more promising than they had seemed in quite some time. Although Franklin D. Roosevelt had died on April 12, his worthy successor Harry S. Truman competently carried on the duties of a wartime president. By this time, the Nazi regime in Germany was finished. Hitler committed suicide at the end of April. Although the war with Japan was continuing, VE (Victory in Europe) Day was declared on May 8 with the unconditional surrender of Germany one day before. People were already being demobilized from the armed services.

Things were looking up for the IGS too, with increased demand for programs now that people were coming home from the war. The Institute was planning not only the second annual summer seminar-workshop, but also another introductory course by Chisholm, and in the late fall both an introductory and an advanced seminar with Korzybski in San Francisco, in addition to his regular Holiday Intensive. It looked as if, with the increased seminar income, the Institute would be able to squeak by for another year. (Although it would still not have enough money to get Korzybski off the treadmill of giving one seminar after another with little time for creative work or the development of the new programs he hoped for.)

Even with the war coming to an end, Korzybski did not seem exactly full of bubbly cheer. A good deal of his dampened mood may have resulted from accumulated fatigue and a sense of his own increasing physical limitations. On May 4, he wrote to Douglas Campbell,

As to my health, I just carry on, thoroughly paralyzed by lack of help. With Pearl ill, Ann [Cleveland] married, what is left here of the old staff are Kendig and Charlotte, and the rest are accidentals, mostly lousy and hard to get these days. I do not accomplish as much as I should. My war 1 hernia is bothering me more and more. I am too old to have an operation and the g.d. diaphragm trouble here and there affects my breathing and so eventually even my heart., which still is in very good shape. I am all right at the Institute and lecturing, but I have difficulties traveling or delivering lectures elsewhere. I may still survive for a while. (10) 

Alfred’s relationship with Mira seemed to have passed a milestone the previous year. Except for a brief flurry of upset then, regarding an autobiography she had written for Who’s Who, Alfred finally seemed to have come to grips with Mira’s gifts and the benign nature of her sometimes careless (to him) previous manner of public expression. By 1945, from the evidence of their ongoing correspondence, he had ended his recriminations. The two maintained a loving relationship until the end of his life. Having attended eight seminars and having steeped herself in reading and study for several years, Mira had come to a deeper appreciation of her own educational gaps and the true measure of Alfred’s achievements. She seemed at last to feel comfortable with a quiet role in the background of Alfred’s work. She read, attended lectures, sent him notes, and offered suggestions, which he often heeded. She could see he appreciated her intelligence, her dedicated personal application of extensional methodology, and her help. In turn, she also came to realize that ultimately, he had done his work and continued to do it—as he had told her—primarily for her sake. 

Alfred and Mira, circa 1945-1946

Now, Alfred had serious concerns about her health. In 1944, she had begun to have significant attacks of crippling pain in her arms, hands, knees, etc. It had hobbled her at times and though the attacks seemed to pass she had had to stop painting altogether. Both she and Alfred had concerns about the prognosis of what was diagnosed as “transient arthritis”. How were they going to pay for her care and possible treatments? Another worry developed at the beginning of the year—she had serious gum infections that required surgery, tooth extractions, and extensive denture work. At least she was now getting these problems dealt with.

Her physician had referred her to Dr. Dick, an arthritis specialist and director of medicine at nearby Billings Hospital, associated with the University of Chicago. Dick was interested in Mira’s case and found her such an observant and helpful patient that he offered her free treatment in exchange for her willingness to serve as a ‘guinea pig’. Dick arranged for the hospital to cover the cost of her treatments and even of her dental surgery. He had admitted her to the hospital for several weeks in April but finally released her at the beginning of May as her symptoms subsided and she felt antsy about getting back home.

When she collected her mail from the janitor of her building, she—and then Alfred—got shocking news. A letter from Walter Polakov postmarked May 2 from Washington, D.C. had the following short note inside: “Dearest Edgy and Alfred, Barbara shot herself on the 26th. Polly”. Walter wrote a more extensive note dated April 27:

Edgy dear: 

Yesterday at 1:07 p.m. Barbara committed suicide by blowing her brains out. I was serving dinner. She could no longer endure, I suppose, the memories of her youth and childhood as she turned out to be again an invalid. T.B. returned full blast under war conditions. I need not tell you more. You can understand the unsaid. I grew so much a part of her and she of me. Not a thought and emotion were separated. No action without mutual agreement.  

                                                                               Walter Polly
                                                                               Washington
P.S. I am returning to Fairfax, Virginia (11)

What could either Alfred or Mira do to console their longtime friend? Not much. At least they had remained in contact with Walter and Barbara—however sporadically—over the last few years and they would continue to do so with Walter.

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. 

Chapter 57 – “Release of Atomic Energy”
3. Jekuthiel Ginsburg Obituary, 10/8/1957. New York Times. 

4. “Paper and Piano Puzzle Explained”, 10/10/1957. New York Times. 

5. Kasner, “Foreword” to the Second Edition of Manhood of Humanity, p. xv. 

6. AK to Edward Kasner, 5/15/1945. IGS Archives. 

7. Ibid. 

8. AK to Cassius Keyser, 9/22/1945. IGS Archives. 

9. AK to Edward Kasner, 5/15/1945. IGS Archives. 

10. AK to Douglas Campbell, 5/4/1945. IGS Archives. 

11. Walter Polakov to MEK, 4/27/1945. AK Archives, Box 22, Folder 3.

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Chapter 57 - "Release Of Atomic Energy": 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.

Despite the fact that Hayakawa’s work in ETC. had begun to get more bothersome, Korzybski had continued to send in contributions and Hayakawa continued to publish them.(1) Korzybski’s contributions (forewords and reviews of articles and books from the fields of psychiatry, education, biology, physics, etc.) provided updates to the background research material he had used in Science and Sanity. They also reflected an issue that had pulled on his attention for some time. The authors of these articles and books were pointing out the need for explicitly acknowledging the value orientation of the sciences, the need for integration among different areas of study, and the need for application of scientific attitudes and approaches to social problems. Although they pointed out such needs, these authors for the most part failed to indicate practical means for fulfilling them. Korzybski considered it important to point out that his methodology, explicitly dealing with neuro-evaluational and neuro-linguistic issues, provided that missing factor of application. As he had written to Keyser in the fall of 1943, 

Under separate cover I am sending to you the first issue of ETC: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS. On my insistence the first number of the ETC opened with Thorndike’s ‘Science and Values’. Please note my foreword. I endorsed that article thoroughly and yet does it work? It does not. And it takes our particular training to make it workable. We are in an empirical field and we count the results. In the next issue of ETC we are publishing, also with my foreword, the presidential address of Langmuir, and a paper of Bell on Greek mathematics. The difficulties again are the same; we can say ‘fine, fine, fine’ and no doubt they are fine. As an engineer I ask ‘does that work?’ and the answer is unfortunately ‘no’. We need a whole discipline as shown in forty hours of seminars, the extensional method as I call it, to make it work. We are having results, which as far as I am concerned, is all that matters. (2)

Perhaps more than anything else Korzybski wanted to get across to people this message of application. As he would often say, with every seminar he learned something more about how to do this—especially in regard to the obstacles related to students’ preconceived attitudes and corresponding psycho-logical difficulties. He also felt concerned about the obstacles involved in conveying his work to individuals (not just his students) from different groups: individuals within a particular group might share common ‘problematic’ attitudes. In 1945, he found new opportunities to address two of the main groups he had long sought to influence: mathematicians and psychiatrists.

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. In the Discussion section of ETC ’s 1944-1945 Winter issue, Hayakawa had reprinted an article, “Semantics, General Semantics: An Attempt At Definition”, that he had originally written for the Dictionary of World Literature. In the article, Hayakawa defined ‘General Semantics’ under the term ‘Semantics’, which from Korzybski’s view—at this point in the development of his work—confused the two disciplines. Hayakawa also referred to the extensional devices as ‘semantic devices’—an inaccuracy in terms of Korzybski’s usage, which Korzybski believed, increased the confusion. Perhaps most bothersome, Hayakawa had written this original article, had it published, and then reprinted it in ETC., without consulting Korzybski at any step. See Korzybski’s ‘Protest letter to the editor of ETC.’ in Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, p. 820. 

2. AK to C. J. Keyser, 10/6/1943, IGS Archives.

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Chapter 56 - Time To Try New Things: Part 6 - Autumn News

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.

Korzybski, who followed the news closely, must have been aware of the debacle occuring in Poland, even as the war seemed to be coming to an end. D-Day, the successful invasion of Normandy in June, had marked another turning point. Germany was getting squeezed from all sides between British and American forces from the west and the Soviets from the east—small comfort for the Poles. In August as the Soviet army reached the eastern suburbs of Warsaw, it stopped. Stalin had decided to let the Germans level Warsaw. The Germans focused their remaining forces and weaponry on defeating the Polish Home Army, which had begun an uprising in Warsaw. A quarter of a million citizens in the Polish capital were killed before the uprising was over in October. Before the Germans withdrew from the city, they destroyed as much of it as they could and exiled a large portion of its population. Whatever agony Korzybski may have felt (and I guess that he felt a great deal), he kept it inside. There was nothing he could do about the situation in Warsaw. And the situation at home, as always, required his attention.

The Institute had gotten even more short of help in June when Pearl Johnecheck came down with a serious infection, either measles or scarlet fever. As 1944 advanced into autumn, she developed some kind of rheumatic heart condition. She could no longer continue her studies or her work at the Institute. She would do what she could do to help and would remain in close contact with Mira (with whom she had grown close), Alfred, and the other people at the Institute. But by the next year, she would be hospitalized before beginning a slow recovery in the last half of 1945. Charlotte Schuchardt, still hoping to develop a career in dance, had been working as Korzybski’s editorial assistant and as the main instructor of the seminar-workshop ‘neuro-semantic relaxation’ sessions—besides myriad other office and organizational duties. Now she took over Pearl’s job as Korzybski’s confidential secretary and Institute office manager.

The shortage of money also remained a pressing concern. A report at the end of 1944 would indicate that they were $10,000 short of their $20,000 short-term fundraising goal. They would need $10,000 more in pledges soon just to allow them to continue operating until the end of 1945 at what had become their normal, bare-to-the-bone level—with little extra for new programs, additional staff, etc.

Before the summer seminar-workshop, Kendig had applied for a grant from the Field Foundation to fund the IGS project in leadership training, which she and Korzybski had been hoping to develop for a number of years. She had an interview in New York with the foundation’s executive director, Maxwell Hahn. The foundation, a charitable trust started by Chicago Sun publisher Marshall Field III, had a special interest in programs related to fighting racial prejudice. Kendig had tried to focus her conversation with Hahn on Korzybski’s work in relation to prejudice and social tensions. Kendig had arranged and annotated for Hahn a selection of reviews, articles, and reprints. She also had Elwood Murray send materials about the many general-semantics related programs at the University of Denver and elsewhere, including a course on “Minority Problems in Denver”. Even with this impressive array of materials and courses, the Field Foundation turned down Kendig’s grant application in October. She would continue to try to get grant money from them, to no avail.

Despite the Institute’s struggle to survive, 1944 saw a surprising amount of public interest in Korzybski’s work. Life magazine commissioned Fred Rodell, a law professor at Yale who had done some popular writing, to write an article on GS and politics with Korzybski’s collaboration (Korzybski and Rodell would be listed as co-authors). Rodell, as well as a Life photographer, came to see Korzybski before the summer seminar. Eventually, Life decided not to carry the article, entitled “A Word to the Wise”. and sold it to Liberty magazine, which published it in its November 4 edition. To Korzybski the article seemed like a mishmosh due to faulty editing, but without question it brought publicity.

Korzybski’s books were selling like never before. Manhood of Humanity had completely sold out. With continuing demand for it, the Institute put out a call for used copies. It was listed as “temporarily out of print” on the Institute booklist. It would remain ‘temporarily out of print’ for the next six years. E.P. Dutton no longer had an interest in continuing with it. Mira, who had long reminded Alfred of the importance of time-binding for his ongoing work, urged him to begin writing an introduction to a new edition. The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company would publish it. He worked on it in fits and starts until the end of his life, but with other projects, various interruptions, and the exceptionally demanding standards for publication that he had come to impose on his own writing, he never completed it. (The second edition, with additional material by him and others, came out in 1950, a few months after his death.)

The demand for Science and Sanity in 1944 seems even more remarkable. The Institute sold four times as many copies as were sold in any previous year since the original publication of the book, just a little over 10 years before. They had already had to do some reprintings of the Second Edition. Later, in the spring of 1945, the book became unavailable for a number of months due to labor problems and paper shortages.

Even with the reduced demand for his seminars, Korzybski and the people at the Institute remained extremely busy. In August, Korzybski had gone with Kendig to Denver where they both lectured as part of the University of Denver’s summer workshop in improved communication, based on general semantics. While there, Korzybski spoke to the psychiatrists’ group at Fitzsimmons Hospital. Meanwhile at the Institute, Francis Chisholm began giving a six-session evening course, “Introduction to General Semantics”, over three weeks in August. Chisholm had left his position at Syracuse University and was going to begin teaching at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri in the fall. About 40 people attended his course, which was transcribed and published by the Institute that winter as Introductory Lectures in General Semantics. Chisholm had been working at the Institute over the summer and seemed to Korzybski and Kendig like the kind of leader they wanted to encourage and develop. Kendig, whose professional background included curriculum development and educational research had long seen the need for a “so-called standard course which [could] be used in ‘controlled experiments.’ ” Chisholm had begun researching and designing such a course or at least an outline/syllabus that could serve to standardize courses in this way. (29) 

Much of these Institute doings were reported in an Autumn 1944, General Semantics Newsletter written by Kendig and sent out near the end of the year along with another fundraising notice. The newsletter noted an additional bit of promotional news for the Society for General Semantics. The Society had consolidated its business office with the editorial office of ETC. at the Illinois Institute of Technology (formerly the Armour Institute), where Hayakawa worked. The item noted that Karl Hauch, the Society’s Secretary-Treasurer, would be glad to receive membership applications and renewals. Given the difficult wartime circumstances, the Society for General Semantics, at the end of its first membership year, seemed to be doing rather well, which promised to add to the Institute coffers too. The Institute had managed to survive for another year.

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. 

29. General Semantics Newsletter, Autumn 1944, AKDA Scrapbook 4.79.

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Chapter 56 - Time To Try New Things: Part 5 - 'A Deaf Ear'

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.

Hayakawa had gotten some pieces of general semantics but had insufficiently grasped the system that connected them. You could get to some useful places by climbing his ladder. He had skillfully translated Korzybski’s new vision into the old elementalistic language that people could use without getting too discomforted. But at a certain point, you would have to kick away the ladder after you had climbed it, in order to understand and make use of Korzybski’s more comprehensive and radical approach.

Korzybski was becoming more concerned about Hayakawa’s lapses, especially since Hayakawa had come to appear to more and more people as a major spokesman for his work. At this point, he had written to Hayakawa about some of these issues in a friendly way. Despite these differences there seemed little rancor between the two men in the summer of 1944. They still seemed like friends. But trouble had been brewing.

As early as 1940, Kendig had written a memo to Alfred discussing some of these issues. It had bothered them that Hayakawa had never had a personal interview with Korzybski, nor attended a complete seminar (and as noted before, typically fell asleep when he sat in on Alfred’s lectures). He later explained he got bored hearing Korzybski repeating the ‘same’ things he already ‘knew’.(12) So much for ‘Lecture1 is not Lecture2, Lecture2 is not Lecture3, etc.’—the form of which Hayakawa had enthusiastically praised as “the most simple, most general, and most efficient of the rules for extensionalization.”(13) But Hayakawa didn’t follow his own rules, as he admitted in a 1990 interview with Roy E. Fox:

SIH: I’m not conscious of approaching some things with a non-Aristotelian point of view. 

RF: So to carry general semantics around with you all the time is not something you would advocate? 

SIH: That’s right. To carry it around with you all the time, you’d have to be more obsessed than I have ever been. (14) 

Up until 1944, Korzybski had mainly decided to overlook such things in consideration of the young professor’s merits. On December 2, 1943, he had written a two-page report recommending Hayakawa for a Guggenheim Fellowship.(15) There’s no evidence that Korzybski’s appreciation of Hayakawa’s talents as a teacher, writer, and editor was anything other than entirely genuine. He had agreed to having Hayakawa put the Institute as the nominal publisher of the 1940 second lithographed edition of Language in Action—despite the abstraction ladder. Korzybski had helped Hayakawa get a commercial deal with the Book-of-the-Month Club through his contact with David Fairchild. Despite its flaws, he had spoken well of the book, and of Hayakawa, in public and in private letters. The Institute had promoted the book and reprints of Hayakawa’s articles on its publication list, had promoted his work in seminars, and had honored him by making him an Institute Fellow. Korzybski had expressed delight with his appointment as Editor of ETC. He seemed to think the problems with Hayakawa could be resolved with suggestions and corrections. But it didn’t all depend on Korzybski.

Hayakawa had developed some disparaging notions about Korzybski and some grandiose ones about his own relation to Korzybski’s work. Whatever the reasons, his attitudes toward Korzybski seemed to make Hayakawa impervious to any of Korzybski’s efforts to get through to him. These attitudes are revealed in detail in two remarkable documents—one, an interview-memoir of the Hayakawas conducted in 1989—and later—by Julie Gordon Shearer (publically available on the internet from the University of California, Berkeley); and the 1990 Fox interview, published in ETC. in 1991.

Margedant Peters Hayakawa noted in the Shearer interview that she had felt an instant aversion to Korzybski when she first met him.(16) Despite a number of friendly gestures and invitations to come to seminars and have an interview with him, she assiduously avoided such contacts. Both she and her husband soon came to look at Korzybski in terms of her initial snap judgment: he ‘was’ in their view a dogmatic and demanding dictator who encouraged unquestioning, cultish followers.(17) By the end of their lives, the Hayakawas did not hesitate to cast aspersions about Korzybski’s ‘nuttiness’, his supposed failure to develop his work after writing Science and Sanity, his discouragement of student’s contributions to the development of general semantics, etc. I’m not sure they exactly qualify as lies because the Hayakawas apparently accepted them as innocent truths. The notion that Hayakawa and his wife might be projecting their own issues onto Korzybski and identifying him with their projections never seemed to occur to either one of them. Hayakawa seemed to see every action of Korzybski—every comment and suggestion—as an unreasonable demand for obedience. (18) Perceiving Korzybski thusly and given his own significant drive for power (he later became a controversial university president and then a U.S. Senator) he seemed determined to put himself in the role of “disobedient and disloyal son.”(19) I can imagine a likely reply from Alfred: “I am not your father!”

The Hayakawas still maintained a veneer of pleasantness with Korzybski in 1944. However, Hayakawa’s resentments would become overt, at least behind Korzybski’s back, within the next few years. Much of what he said and did influenced other people’s attitudes toward Korzybski. Much of this eventually got back to Korzybski and his colleagues at the Institute. Hayakawa’s misunderstandings and hostility became not only a significant source of personal pain for Korzybski but a major source of the problems that would occur between the Institute and the Society for General Semantics. And Hayakawa’s influence would help perpetuate misunderstandings about general semantics that continued long after Korzybski’s death.

Hayakawa’s behavior in relation to Korzybski from 1944 on seemed consistent with attitudes he expressed much later: he believed that he—and to a lesser extent Johnson and Lee—had made Korzybski famous and that Korzybski felt jealous of him because of that. In the ETC. interview with Fox, he remarked:

S.I.H.: When my Language in Action became a Book-of the-Month Club selection, that made him furious!....

R.F. [Interviewer Roy Fox]: “So Korzybski thought your book was incomplete? or inaccurate?”

S.I.H. : [Laughing] Just unfair competition! He wanted people to buy his book and not mine! (20) 

At bottom, probably even by 1944, Hayakawa had very mixed feelings about Korzybski, his work, his colleagues, and the Institute. He gave little value to the Institute courses, which he considered ‘religious indoctrination’.(21) Korzybski’s more dedicated students seemed suspect too: “I’m sure there were people who made a kind of cult out of it, and I’m sure Korzybski encouraged it.”(22) In short, the Institute didn’t seem academically respectable to him.(23) To believe this in 1944, he would have had to ignore the fact of Korzybski’s many students from academia who were making use of his work in university courses around the country. However, Hayakawa’s discomfort with Korzybski’s work may eventually have had some self-fulfilling effects on the attitudes of academics with whom Hayakawa interacted and influenced.

As he indicated in the Shearer interview, the Society for General Semantics, not the Institute, represented the future of general semantics for him. Hayakawa believed he had done more than anyone else to make Korzybski and general semantics famous. ETC., which he later claimed to have founded and took credit for naming, constituted for him the main reason for the existence of the Society.(24)  And, as far as he was concerned, ETC. existed as his ballywick. He didn’t intend to have Korzybski interfere with the editing of the journal.(25) He seemed determined to become the major figure in ‘semantics’. He—not Korzybski—would use ETC. to define the field and determine the direction of the discipline. (26) 

At the beginning of the year, the problems with Hayakawa that had remained quiescent for so long began to blossom—quietly at first. In January, Kendig had suggested Francis P. Chisholm as a new Institute Fellow. Hayakawa rejected him. According to the rules they had set up, the appointment of a new Institute Fellow needed unanimous approval of the existing Fellows, so there was nothing else Kendig or Korzybski felt they could do. This surely must have bothered them. They both considered Chisholm to have a solid grasp of the non-aristotelian system-discipline and a gift for communicating it. It surely must have grated on them to have Hayakawa, about whom they already felt some qualms, turn down such a capable individual.

There were also inklings of problems with the editing of ETC. Korzybski and Kendig were listed as “Consulting Editors”. Korzybski certainly saw his role as more than symbolic but Hayakawa seemed lax in consulting with either him or Kendig. Korzybski was contributing pieces to the journal—mostly forewords and commentaries on articles, as well as letters and reviews. He had wanted to see the Tables of Contents of upcoming issues. He had comments and suggestions for Hayakawa, who was not communicating with him about these things as he wished. Hayakawa had also begun publishing some material that Korzybski found questionable.(27) 

Now Hayakawa was planning to publish “Newtonian Physics and Aviation Cadets”, in the Spring 1944 issue of ETC. Korzybski had seen the article by Anatol Rapoport, a mathematician then in the Army Air Corp stationed in Alaska, and liked it a lot: it seemed to provide an exceptional example of the power of hidden assumptions and the usefulness of uncovering them. Korzybski had written a foreword to another article by Jerome Alexander and wanted to do something similar with the Rapoport piece, but didn’t know what was going on with the new issue due to come out soon. He wrote to Hayakawa on March 6, in part to get some information and to make some suggestions about the journal.:

Where in hell did you get the article of Rapoport? It is an extremely fine article, just the kind of stuff we want to publish in ETC. Please let me know the history of this article, how you got it...This article is most important for our work and in many ways a justification for it. 

...I am not happy, and neither is Kendig, that you do not let us know about your plans for every next issue of ETC. We have so much fretting to do and guessing what you might do as an editor. For instance, do you plan to publish in the same number the article of Alexander as a leading article in the next issue ( I didn’t see the proofs yet)?...please don’t torture me in guessing what you will or may do as an editor. I have plenty of guessing to do altogether; I want to know what is going on. And believe me, if I am prevented from advising you about ETC. it will not be for the good of ETC. and yourself. (28)

But Hayakawa seemed to have already turned a deaf ear to Korzybski and his concerns.

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. 

12. Fox, p. 247, Shearer, pp. 79, 126-127. 

13. Language in Action (1940), p. 103-104. 

14. Fox, p. 245. 

15. AK to H. A. Moe, 12/2/1943. Ralph Hamilton Papers. 

16. Shearer, p. 132. 

17. Shearer, pp. 133, 134. It appears that Margedant Hayakawa also avoided Korzybski because both she and her husband believed ‘he was a lech’. S. I. later “recalled”: “...he [Korzybski] offered private and rather intimate “semantic massages” to some women he found especially attractive.” [Haslam,. In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa, p. 109.] Disturbing: that S. I. Hayakawa could so blithely accept and repeat as ‘fact’ what most likely existed as hearsay or as his and his wife’s projection; there is no evidence of any inappropriate incidents that he or she directly observed or reliably knew about. Doubly disturbing: Hayakawa’s biographer, Gerald Haslam, seems to accept as ‘fact’, this unflattering gossip about Korzybski that Hayakawa ‘recalled’. (Myths and misinformation about Korzybski and his work abound. Haslam—who studied with Hayakawa—uncritically repeats in his book [and thus may help perpetuate] other unfavorable canards, projections, and unsubstantiated opinions about Korzybski and his work, from Hayakawa and others; I think a key to the enigma of Hayakawa lies therein.) If I had found any reliable evidence of inappropriate sexual conduct on Korzybski’s part (or of other such egregious activity), I would have openly dealt with it in this biography. I didn’t find any. 

18. Shearer, p. 81–82. 

19. Shearer, p. 78. 

20. Fox, p. 247-248. 

21. Fox, p. 248-249. 

22. Fox, p. 248. 

23. Shearer, p. 130. 

24. Shearer, p. 121, 123. 

25. Shearer, p. 126. 

26. Shearer, p. 123-124. 

27. Korzybski had already written a friendly note to Hayakawa about one such questionable piece. [AK to S.I. Hayakawa, 1/18/1944, Ralph Hamilton Papers.] 

28. AK to S.I. Hayakawa, 3/6/1944, Ralph Hamilton Papers.

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Chapter 56 - Time To Try New Things: Part 4 - The Process of Abstracting

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.

The July seminar-workshop was notable for more than its new structure. Korzybski also produced a mimeographed handout for an important new visualization, to use with the structural differential, for conveying the process of abstracting. As a partly iconic, visual (and kinesthetic) representation of Korzybski’s system, nothing had seemed to match the differential as a training device—once students understood the distinctions and relationships represented. There was the rub. Some basic and persistent misunderstandings of the differential by students had vexed him for several years. The origin of Korzybski’s new diagrammatic formulation of abstracting came from his attempt to deal with some of these issues, particularly brought to the fore by Hayakawa’s work.

He described part of the problem in a May 24 letter to Robert Lee Durham, President of the Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia, who had sent a letter asking about some fundamental issues related to identity and identification:

You know from Science and Sanity the structural differential. On top there is the event, then comes the ‘object’, and then follow higher and higher order abstractions. On a printed page the ‘higher’ go ‘down’. A great many students are somehow confused because higher and higher abstractions in a diagram go physically lower and lower on a printed page. In the lithographed edition [1939] of Hayakawa’s Language in Action the differential was given the way it was in Science and Sanity, from the top of the page down, which was correct. He was pestered by his students on this subject. Somehow he did not know the answer, so in the printed text edition of his book on page 96 he turned around the differential and put in print: ‘Start reading from bottom UP’. Why in the dickens then do it, when normally you read from up down? The answer is the unconscious assumption trained in us in a pre-scientific orientation; namely, the earth is flat and so ‘up’ and ‘down’ have absolute value, while on a spherical earth they have only relative value. (9) 

In the later editions of his book, Hayakawa had further compounded the problem of reversing the Structural Differential by renaming it “The Abstraction Ladder”, a metaphor that reified the unconscious assumption of absolute ‘up’ and ‘down’ and obscured the process aspect of abstracting. Hayakawa’s ladder metaphor effectively eliminated the circularity of human knowledge, the important connection between the highest and lowest levels in the process. In subsequent editions of the book, Hayakawa even used a picture of a ladder with a little man seemingly stranded at the top.

The structure of a representation could radically change what got expressed. Korzybski had long warned his students about the dangers of translating the non-aristotelian system into the old elementalistic distinctions and terminology. To a significant extent, Hayakawa had so far—and would continue—to do exactly that. Korzybski had advised speaking in terms of “evaluation”. But in Language in Action, Hayakawa continued to talk about ‘meaning’ without quotes (easier to forget about a ‘meaning-maker’). Korzybski had built his terminology distinguishing different orientations (extensional versus intensional), from the prior distinction between extensional and intensional definitions. He had rejected the distinction of ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’ as elementalistic and confusing, since it depended on what he considered a faulty distinction between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ factors. But Hayakawa built his discussion in terms of ‘extensional meaning’ or ‘denotation’ and ‘intensional meaning’ or ‘connotation’. Hayakawa wrote:

The extensional meaning of a word or expression is that which it points to (denotes) in the extensional [physical] world...[it] cannot be expressed in words, because it is that which the words stand for...The intensional meaning of a word or expression, on the other hand, is that which is suggested (connoted) in the mind. (10) 

If one accepted Korzybski’s contention that any definition (extensional or intensional) evaluated—by someone—had a neurological context, one could not continue to distinguish ‘denotation’ from ‘connotation’ in the way Hayakawa had done. Using Hayakawa’s elementalistic terms in quotes, any ‘meanings’ had to exist ‘in the mind’, i.e., ‘inside someone’s head’. Talking about ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’ in the way Hayakawa did, implied a sharp distinction between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ factors that didn’t exist, even if most people felt familiar and comfortable with those terms.

Hayakawa’s presentation of ‘general semantics’ had other related problems, including: his under-emphasis of non-verbal levels of abstracting; his emphasis on individual words rather than statements to illustrate different levels of verbal abstraction (potentially very misleading since determining the level of abstraction of one word compared to another required a larger context); his under-emphasis on the constructive as well as the ‘leaving out’ aspects of abstracting; his failure to connect mapping to the process of abstracting; his relative neglect of self-reflexiveness and complete neglect of multiordinality; his neglect of the elementalism/non-elementalism distinction and his persistent use of elementalistic formulations (e.g., talking about ‘affective’, ‘informational’, ‘directive’ and ‘pre-symbolic’ dimensions of language as if these could exist as entirely separate forms); his persistence in formulating elementalistically in terms of ‘meaning’ (he could have remedied this somewhat by using quotes but in the book he had neither discussed nor used single quotes or hyphens as safety devices); his interchangeable use of ‘semantics’ with ‘general semantics’ long after Korzybski had warned him and others about the confusion it caused; et cetera.

According to Kendig, as early as 1943 “as he said at the time, [Korzybski] was ‘struggling how to put his finger on’—how to convey to a writer—the hidden confusions in a manuscript about poetry and science.”(11) She nigh surely was referring to Hayakawa as the writer and to his article “Poetry and Science” published in 1942 in the English Institute Annual, which he reprinted in the Summer 1944 volume of ETC. After grappling with these issues for about a year, Korzybski presented his new diagram to the first summer seminar-workshop class. With a revision of it in 1946 (to bring in feedback interactions and interplay among the levels) and further explanatory text then and in 1950, the diagram became a centerpiece of his teaching in seminars and in his writing until the end of his life. Using it as an adjunct to the Structural Differential, he wanted to make as clear as possible the notion of abstracting as a neurological process.

The Process of Abstracting, 
by Alfred Korzybski (1946,1950)

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. 

9. AK to Robert Lee Durham, 5/24/1944. IGS Archives. 

10. Language in Action (1940), p. 27 

11. Kendig, Foreword to Korzybski’s “An Extensional Analysis..., in Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, p. 565.

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Chapter 56 - Time To Try New Things: Part 3 - Some Students

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.

Three first-time students at the seminar-workshop illustrate a variety of responses to Korzybski’s work. David Harold Fink, a psychiatrist then living in Detroit, had published a book, Release From Nervous Tension in 1943. One chapter, “Words Are Triggers To Action” made generous use of general semantics although he made no mention of it or Korzybski. In writing his book, Fink seems to have been mainly influenced by Chase and Hayakawa, whose books he did mention. (He would also mention Wendell Johnson in later editions.) What he got out of the seminar-workshop seems hard to say since little changed in subsequent editions of his book and I’ve found no correspondence between him and Korzybski. (Mira did read Fink’s book and made notes about the chapter for Alfred.) Pooh-poohed by some academic psychiatric reviewers, Fink’s book would become a self-help bestseller, going through numerous editions over the next several decades and selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Fink wrote about the importance of becoming aware of words as directive maps, which entailed emotional reactions of all kinds. Human progress, social and individual, involved the process of making better, more scientific word maps. Undoubtedly, works like Fink’s, derived in part from Korzybski’s work (without directly referring to it), did much to bring a few of Korzybski’s basic notions into more common usage.

A second student, Alabama native Annie Goulding Dix, taught English and Journalism at the Richmond Professional Institute of the College of William and Mary. A fellow teacher had given her a copy of ETC., something about it grabbed her, and she immediately signed up for the 1944 summer seminar-workshop. A kindly intelligent woman with little pretense, she was willing to do the simple-sounding stuff Korzybski suggested and found it more than eye-opening. As she recounted years later in a memoir, she “found [general semantics] of more value to her students than any other subject she had taught.” It became a central part of her teaching repertoire for the remainder of her career—although she would have to learn how to deal with the reactions of some of her colleagues:

“What is new in all of this?” say some of my learned friends. “It’s all old stuff; everybody knows it. It’s too obvious.” So they will not waste their time with it. I am reminded of the story in the Bible of Naaman, the Syrian captain, who came to the prophet Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. Elisha said, “Go and bathe seven times in the River Jordan.” Naaman was insulted by such trivial treatment, and went away in a rage. His servants said to him, “If he had told you to do some big thing, you would have done it. Why not try what he says?” So he put his pride in his pocket and went back to do the thing that was so trivial that it was insulting. And, lo and behold, he was cured!

Ann felt willing to experiment with what she was learning at the seminar-workshop:

I remember the first time I consciously tested the efficacy of language usage as suggested by General Semantics. It was during my summer with Korzybski in Chicago in 1944. I was in the Loop in Chicago. It was dinner time and I was hungry. I looked at menus in the windows of restaurants. One was appealing, except that it had carrots, food that I had hated since I was a child. Korzybski had recently discussed the obvious fact that all things change. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, put it this way: “No one can step into the same river twice.” You come nearer to communicating what you mean if you mentally date your comments. For example: myself 1944 is not myself 1914. So I consciously brought my distaste for carrots out into the open. “As a child, I didn’t like carrots. I still don’t like them.” Now to test the General Semantics suggestion, I said to myself: “Annie Goulding (as my mother called me in 1914) didn’t like carrots. Now, I am Ann (as my friends call me in 1944.) Those two persons are not the same.” So putting my distaste in my pocket (as Naaman had put his pride), I went into the restaurant and ordered the dinner with the carrots.

And, lo and behold, they were delicious.

Thus I discovered that, to speak truth in any judgment or evaluation, the tense of the verb is very important. In this case, only the past tense: “I hated” carrots or “used to hate carrots,” was true. By testing for current facts, I saw that my use of the present tense: I “hate carrots” was false. Many changes had occurred in those past thirty years. I had no current opinion. I had only been quoting the opinion of that little girl of long ago. (4)

In 1947, she would become a professor at the New Jersey State Teachers College (now Montclair State University), where she worked until her retirement in 1962. Afterwards, she continued teaching adult classes in GS. She wrote only a few articles for ETC. and the General Semantics Bulletin. But one of them, “Avoiding The Dangers Of Semantic Adolescence”, presented in 1951 as a paper at the First Conference on General Semantics at the University of Chicago, provides one of the clearest accounts of some of the dangers and challenges involved in internalizing a non-aristotelian orientation.

Beware of merely talking about general semantics without applying its principles in practice. The highly verbal individual who finds in general semantics a new and exciting philosophy is in danger of keeping it forever on the verbal level, thus increasing the very futility that its discipline hopes to correct. ...general semantics has not served its purpose until it enters into the language and evaluative habits of the individual. It is this that concerns me as a teacher,...Our beginners—be they young or old—need to be constantly reminded of what Korzybski said: that extensional orientation is a lifetime process. The exhilaration that comes with the beginning of awareness is not the end but only the beginning, and the growing or adolescent stage will not always be easy. But the maturity we seek is worth the effort. (5) 

A few years after her seminar with Korzybski, Ann would move to New York City and marry another student of Korzybski, Adlerian psychiatrist Joseph Immanuel Meiers—a Jewish refugee from Latvia. Both Ann and Joseph Meiers exemplified the quiet maturity and good humor of Korzybski’s best students. They didn’t become famous, but as relatively uncelebrated leaders they positively affected many people’s lives. (The couple became life-long friends of Charlotte Schuchardt Read and Allen Walker Read, living a few blocks from them on the upper Westside of Manhattan near Columbia University.)

A third notable student at this first IGS seminar-workshop was a twenty-three year old ‘firecracker’ from Miami, Florida named Ken Keyes, Jr. He had joined the Navy in the summer of 1941. As he had hoped by enlisting early, he was able to live at home while ‘sailing a desk’ in a Naval Intelligence censorship unit in Miami. By 1944, he was serving as chief petty officer in a Naval Intelligence photo lab on the ‘U.S.S. DuPont’, his name for the building in downtown Miami where he had his office. Ken and his wife, Roberta Rymer Keyes, already the parents of two, had become very enthusiastic about general semantics and its possibilities for reforming childhood education.

They (mainly Ken) began corresponding with the Institute in 1943 on the stationary of an organization they had just founded, “The Society for Educational Research—a non-profit group devoted to the formulation and dissemination of objectives and methods for 20th Century education”. With considerable financial resources (both Ken and Roberta had wealthy parents) they had already in 1944 bought 45 acres of property south of Miami for a non-aristotelian educational experiment they planned. Using general semantics as the core they were “hoping to set up and run a demonstration project in which five orphans from each race of humankind could grow up in loving harmony together.”(6) Life eventually prevented the project from happening.

Although Korzybski and Kendig provided encouragement, there seems more than a whiff of utopianism in Keyes’ letters. His ‘semantic adolescence’ seems clear from a note he wrote to Korzybski at the seminar: he had not prepared a personal history for his interview because “there are no personal problems of personality maladjustment, relations with people, etc., that I am aware of at the present time.”(7) (Years later, Keyes would write extensively about his own personality problems after he did become aware of them.) In his interview, he wanted to talk with Korzybski about the work he and his wife were planning. It seems likely that Korzybski indulged him. Without question Keyes could get things done. He had already demonstrated talents as a businessman, inventor, and photographer, among other things. He had access, probably through his work, to people with graphic design and printing skills. Although he wasn’t able to stay until the end of the workshop, he had agreed to prepare for seminar participants a professional-looking print handout of Korzybski’s blackboard diagrams—which he did. Korzybski and Kendig greatly appreciated his work.

The young man seemed very serious about changing the world with general semantics. Soon after the seminar-workshop in September 1944 he changed the name of his organization to “The Institute for Non-Aristotelian Research and Education”. Over the next year and a half, he continued to correspond with Korzybski and Kendig about the organization’s projects. He formed a study group in Miami, gave seminars; and sent professional-looking graphic mockups to Korzybski with cartoons and illustrations for a handbook he was producing, as well as for a journal for an association of GS teachers he wanted to establish.

In June 1945, Korzybski wrote to him, bluntly advising him to ‘put on the brakes’:

Your experience in teaching GS is not long enough or good enough...I am not trying to discourage you. Your ambitions are praiseworthy, but certainly for success you have to slow down and give yourself more time to digest the whole thing in your organism more. (8) 

After leaving the Navy, Keyes with Roberta and their two children, would put aside his institute and its long-term educational projects for the more immediate business of making a living. Then in 1946, their institute got permanently shelved after he contracted polio. But, despite becoming significantly disabled, he—and Roberta—would help Korzybski afterwards in a most important way.

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. Annie Dix Meirs 1995, pp. 61-62. 

5. Ann Dix Meiers 1952, p. 277. 

6. Keyes 1989, p. 16. 

7. Ken Keyes, Jr. to AK, nd. I.G.S Archives.

8. AK to Ken Keyes, 6/21/1945 qtd. in letter of Ken Keyes, Jr. to AK, 7/5/1945. IGS Archives.

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