Chapter 53 - Question Marks: 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.

On January 2, 1941, Korzybski finished the lecture portion of the Holiday Intensive, a seminar notable not only for the presence of his old friend Joseph Brewer, but also for two exceptional students, Francis P. Chisholm and Harry L. Weinberg, each of whom would become important general-semantics teachers. 

Chisholm, an English instructor at Syracuse University, had already attended the June 1940 seminar with his wife. He had a particular interest in the implications of general semantics for graduate school training in the humanities. Korzybski would develop a high regard for Chisholm and his talents. Within a few years, Chisholm was teaching an introductory course in general semantics at the Institute—a job few people had in Korzybski’s lifetime.

Weinberg—an industrial research chemist from Philadelphia—had first read Science and Sanity in 1939 and as he later wrote, “swallowed it whole—the book, the line, the thinker.” He and his wife Blanche—anticipating imminent U.S. entry into the war and the possibility of Harry getting drafted (as it turned out an accurate prediction)—had quit their jobs in 1940 to take a four month, thousand-mile-long canoe trip together. As Harry wrote:

Neither of us had ever been in a canoe before and so our progress at first was slow. Even slower was my reprogress through Science and Sanity. Each morning I would read a page or two and spend the rest of the day thinking about them while paddling. I like to think that my understanding and my biceps improved at about the same rate. (1) 

Attending Korzybski’s Holiday seminar improved his understanding still further. After the war he began his next career as a teacher of speech communication and GS. Korzybski would declare him one of his most gifted students.

The Holiday seminar had gone well for other reasons. R. F. Hedin, a surgeon who ran the Interstate Clinic, a multi-disciplinary medical practice in Red Wing, Minnesota, attended with his wife. Impressed with what he had absorbed at the seminar, Hedin not only decided to add a psychiatrist to his staff but also invited Korzybski to come to Red Wing to give a seminar. The Hedins and another attendee, independently wealthy Red Wing artist and photographer John Anderson, also donated money to the Institute. Both the Hedins and Anderson probably came to Korzybski at the suggestion of Charles Biederman, a painter/sculptor friend of Anderson, who had spent time in Red Wing and had attended one of the Institute’s earliest seminars in August 1938. (Biederman, profoundly affected by Korzybski, had begun work on a non-aristotelian theory of art and art history, later published in the 1948 book, Art As The Evolution Of Visual Knowledge.)

While Korzybski was giving his final lecture on January 2, Kendig was having meetings and making plans for the coming year. In a January 5 memo to Korzybski, she reported on the two-hour meeting she had with Irving J. Lee, who had gotten very busy. Besides his regular teaching, he had just had an article published on “General Semantics and Public Speaking” in the December 1940 Quarterly Journal of Speech and was in the midst of giving a series of talks around Chicago to men’s and women’s groups. As he told Kendig, he also planned to meet with an official from the Rosenwald Fund, an educational foundation, to see if he could get money for the Institute. He would present GS as a method for dealing with race prejudice and antisemitism.

Lee also told Kendig perhaps his most exciting news: he had just signed with Harper & Row to write a book based on the material from the “Language and Thought” course he’d begun at Northwestern in the Spring of 1940. (Kendig and Alvin Weinberg, among others, had served as guest lecturers.) He’d contracted to deliver a manuscript to the publisher in April. Lee showed Kendig the chapter outlines of the book, to be called Words Are Not Enough!: An Introduction To General Semantics.(2) (It seems unfortunate he later changed this catchy and quite fitting title to the more academic and restrictive one of Language Habits In Human Affairs.) He would write it in less than five months while teaching his regular course load. Along with Hayakawa’s Language In Action, Lee’s book would for many people provide an entry to Korzybski’s work more easily accessible than Science and Sanity. Korzybski unhesitatingly promoted the work of both men in private letters and in Institute announcements, although it seems clear that Lee had especially impressed Korzybski. He read Lee’s manuscript and Lee asked him to write the foreword, which he did in August, commenting that,

...Its theoretical foundations are solid, presented in a common-sense practical language. Besides, from his long study the author gives a wealth of examples which are very illuminating and important. For years I have been hoping that a student of general semantics would write just such a book. I am satisfied that Dr. Lee has done it. In my own work I shall have to keep his book on my desk as a handbook that I may benefit from his erudition and examples. (3) 

After the book came out in December, Korzybski told Mrs. Dewing, “It really is a very workable and remarkable book. Lee is one of my best students, and for the time being, if I coagulate he is the best man at present we could have as the head of the Institute.”(4) 

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. Weinberg, p. xii. 

2. Lee’s book was listed as Words Are Not Enough! in preliminary ‘Front Matter’ page proofs of the Second Edition of Science and Sanity. IGS Archives. 

3. Korzybski, “Foreword” Language Habits In Human Affairs, p. x. 

4. AK to F. Dewing, 12/11/1941. IGS Archives. 

Part 2 >

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Chapter 52 - "Recognition But Very Little Money": Part 4 - "Do You See Red?"

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.

As Alfred was putting the finishing touches on his presentation in early May, grim news continued to come out of Europe. Poles who had escaped to the West had already told of the widespread destruction inflicted on their country by both Nazi and Soviet invaders.(12) In Scandanavia, the Germans were wrapping up a spring offensive against Norway and Denmark and moving into Luxemburg, Holland, and Belgium, which soon fell. In June, Alfred got his U.S. citizenship and may have quietly celebrated by going out to eat at a fish and chips place with Mira.(13) As the month progressed, when he was not teaching or writing, the news of the fall of France absorbed him. In an astonishingly short period of time, the Germans—moving down from Belgium—had simply gone around, and to some extent through, the major portion of the “Maginot Line”, the extensive series of defense fortifications the French had built along the German and Italian borders with great confidence that they could hold back the Nazi advance. By the end of June, Germany occupied the northern half of France while a collaborationist French puppet government was establishing itself in the south with its capital in Vichy. Korzybski expressed his disgust in part 1 of section H of the “Introduction” which he entitled ‘Maginot Line Mentalities’:

Present day scientific researches and historical world developments show there is no doubt that the old aristotelian epoch of human evolution is dying...I doubt if in the whole of human history there is a more accentuated illustration than the tragic and sudden collapse, in the summer of 1940, of the French government and army, and eventually of French culture and ‘democracy’...We test the freshness or deterioration of fishes by smelling the head end, and as we know at the date of this writing, the head ends of the French ‘democracy’ have a putrid odor...The ‘Maginot line mentality’ will become a historical classic, and will be applied quite appropriately to other than military fields. It means a thoughtless, self-deceptive, etc., ‘security’ in antiquated systems as matched by modern methods of 1940. (14)  

However demoralized he may have felt, he didn’t mope. His typical style of coping consisted of staying busy and getting busier, working as hard as he possibly could. He was teaching an Intensive Seminar and trying to finish his “Introduction to the Second Edition”. In June, one of his tasks in relation to that included writing to a number of scholars, luminaries, and others whom he knew, for examples of over/under defined terms in their fields. In July he started an evening seminar and in August another intensive. By the end of that month, he finished the first draft of the Introduction and began editing it with Kendig, Charlotte, and Pearl. Meanwhile, the main text for the new edition of the book was being printed.

With all this activity, he only saw Mira occasionally, talked with her on the phone perhaps once a week, and wrote an occasional letter (she wrote to him more often). Pearl and to some extent Charlotte, had become significant intermediaries between the two of them. Mira was becoming quite friendly with them. While she found the infrequent contact with Alfred unsatisfactory, she kept busy with other things. She was living and painting in her studio apartment on the Near North Side. In July, she had gone to Kansas City to visit her sisters. Minnie now had a room in a rest home that seems to have functioned much like an “assisted living facility”. Amy was thinking of giving up her farm and joining Minnie. When Mira returned from her trip, she busied herself with elaborating her notes from the IGS seminars she had audited with Alfred’s permission. For years, she had had a tremendous involvement with Alfred’s work. She had always given it the highest importance. Now despite the troubles of recent years between them, despite her promises to not involve herself with the Institute and with his work, she had gotten re-engaged.

On August 16, Mira sent a blue presentation folder to Alfred. The first of the twenty-six collated pages, obviously the title page, had the following in large type at its center: “When Where and How do you see RED? ask ME one of the Million”. The word “RED” was printed in red. As she later explained to Alfred, she was not presenting this as anything more than her rough ruminations. In a note to him that accompanied the manuscript, she wrote that a wealthy woman she had met in the course of her work had gotten interested in GS through discussions with her and had paid to get Mira’s crude typing neatly mimeographed. Mira also gave copies to one or two friends, besides this woman and Alfred. On the bottom right of the title page was typed “Copyright 1940” with “Mira Edgerly” below that. On the bottom left, was typed “Witness:" with a blank line below it.

Inside were the results of Mira’s ponderings as she had studied her seminar notes and considered the war in Europe and Asia. GS, for her, gave a new and important slant to the age-old theme, “the pen is mightier than the sword”. The opening page shows a deep and heartfelt understanding of her husband’s work and a clear talent for expressing it, albeit in an amateurish way:

“The Pen is Mightier than the Sword”

“Whose Pen?”

Read and see for yourself.

This pen, with which my hand is making these dark marks on this white paper; these word-marks, as objects, or as recorded language is of no living-value to any living-being. For, what is under my hand is neither edible...clothable...sleepable...sit-onable. I ask you to eat, to dress, to sleep or to sit-on this piece of paper: What then is it, in any pen that is mightier than the sword?

It is in the fact that when, and only when these pen-marks are taken as tools for communication, these tools which I now am using and with which I am now trying to convey what is going-on inside my skin to inside your skin; namely, their living-value to you depends entirely on how much alive you are to the neurological processes involved. These pen-marks are an extension onto this paper of what is going on inside my skin and its living-value to you, inside your skin, is entirely in proportion as to how your living nervous system reacts to those pen-marks and what you make out of them, inside your skin...(15)

When he read the manuscript, Alfred ‘saw red’ alright. On August 18, he wrote to C.B. Congdon:

Dear C. B.,
I am deeply distressed by my wife’s latest episode in mimeographing. It looks to me very similar to the episode she had around 1936. ...This episode lasted for a pretty long time, and as you know, did endless harm to me and my work. 

After her South American trip she seemingly recovered. Now seemingly she has another episode which most probably will be more harmful to our work and me than the first one. 

The enclosed latest verbalistic outburst I am afraid shows clearly the symptoms of another forthcoming episode. I am afraid I made a mistake to let her attend my seminars, in spite of the fact that I insisted on her attending as a student, not as a wife. It seems that it only supplied her with material for some worthless verbalism. By now I know that my direct dealing with her leads nowhere. 

I did my best for 21 years and I admit I see no results. 

I will be very grateful to you if you would see her, diagnose her case, and give her some stern advices which perhaps would be more effective than whatever I may say...

...I telephoned to my wife, roughly telling her the content of this letter, asking her to stop distributing her mimeographed episodes, and I am sending to her a copy of this letter. My seeing her personally would do no good and I believe should be avoided. (16) 

Alfred not only phoned Mira, he apparently visited her the previous day. Neither conversation could have been a happy one. In a note dated then—Saturday, August 17—Mira wrote: “Doubtless you had a taste of the flood – I had over the phone – after you left – today.” Above this she had copied down the following limerick, which seems easy to read, in this context, as a testament of the shame she must have felt:

“How happy is the moron,
he doesn’t give a damn.
I wish I were a moron,
My gosh, perhaps I am.”(17) 

Alfred finished his letter to Congdon with further complaints about Mira’s spending habits and the trouble her ‘episode’ had caused him. He already had a mixed reputation in the academic/scientific community around Chicago and was not totally unconcerned about what people might think.

Allen Walker Read could testify to the academic resistance of many at the University of Chicago. An English language scholar and lexicographer, he would not attend his first Korzybski seminar until the 1941 Winter Intensive, but he had already become one of Korzybski’s most solid students and supporters. Born in Minnesota in 1906, Read grew up in Iowa where his father worked as the one-man science faculty of Iowa State Teacher’s College in Cedar Falls. With a love of the English language inspired by H. L. Mencken’s The American Language, Read had decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and take up an academic career studying English as a scientist. With a 1926 M.A. in English from the University of Iowa, he taught English at the University of Missouri before being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for study at Oxford University from 1928 to 1932 where he specialized in descriptive linguistics and lexicography. His extensional attitude and down-to-earth interest in how people talk had already led him in the late 1920s to collect material, i.e., men’s room graffiti, that others did not consider suitable for academic study in English. His resulting book on ‘nasty’ words, Lexical Evidence From Folk Epigraphy In Western North America: A Glossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary had to be privately published in Paris in 1935 in a limited edition of 75 copies. (It was reprinted in 1977 by Maledicta Press under the title, Classic American Graffiti.) In 1932, Read had come to work at the University of Chicago as a research associate and as an Assistant Editor of the Dictionary of American English. He first heard of Korzybski in 1936, read Science and Sanity at that time, and found that Korzybski’s system provided a congenial, scientific orientation for his own studies. “It struck me as exemplifying the rigorous intellectual discipline that I was looking for.”(18) Read had left Chicago for England in 1938 on a Guggenheim fellowship. Unable to stay there when the war started in the fall of 1939, he returned to the U.S. where he finished out his fellowship in 1940 by studying at the New York City Public Library. He returned to Chicago in 1941, to become a colleague of S. I. Hayakawa at the Armour Institute of Technology as an instructor of English. He would also come to know Korzybski and become friends with Kendig, and Charlotte Schuchardt (whom he would marry in 1953).

Allen Walker Read Photo by Charlotte Schuchardt Read, 1954(19)

Even before his return to Chicago, Read had had a chance to observe the responses to Korzybski in the academic community there:

...Intellectual interests were very much polarized by the new young president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and by his henchman Mortimer Adler. They espoused the “Great Books” movement, which seemed to many of us to be backward-looking and in opposition to experimental science... (20)  

Korzybski...was not much accepted by the University community. There were several reasons for this. He was regarded as “over-eager”—pushing his own worth too zealously. Then he used the word “non-Aristotelian” to describe his work, and the defenders of Aristotle’s greatness took offense. Any amount of explaining that Korzybski respected and even venerated Aristotle did not suffice. Furthermore, Korzybski did not come up from a specialized discipline, as one is supposed to do, but burst forth as a full-blown generalist. And he was scornful of the traditional philosophers. I have even heard him use the callow word-play “foolosophers,” and no wonder the foolosophers boycotted him. (21)

Mira certainly did not want to give ammunition to the ‘foolosophers’. She had not intended her missive to be taken too seriously—even with her mention of ‘copyright’ on the first page and of the ‘publisher’ in the text. She had only given copies to a few interested friends and to Alfred. But Alfred did have a certain point in believing he couldn’t afford to have her playing around like that. People would tend to judge her—as his wife—by different, more stringent standards and would, in turn, be likely to judge him by her behavior.

Mira regretted what she had done. But Alfred’s severity disturbed her. She felt he was making too much of the whole thing—to the point of gross unfairness. She felt, as she told him, that he had still not acknowledged his own part in their ongoing vicious circle. Since she had returned from South America at the end of 1938, Mira had felt increasingly cut off from Alfred by his request not to involve herself with his work and with the Institute. Since the founding of the Institute, and especially with the beginning of that year’s financial crisis, he had become even more single-focused on his work. As a result he had almost no time left for her and she yearned for more contact. Besides, his request for her to not get involved with his work had become impossible for her to follow. She had always felt interested, and her attendance at the seminars (with his permission) had awakened her interest still further. She had also felt unduly constrained by his request for her to avoid communicating with people at the University of Chicago and others whom she knew, who were somehow connected to his work. Now, Alfred trusted her even less.

Mira felt she couldn’t win. When she tried to explain and to document her side of things to Congdon, Alfred accused her of broadcasting their private life again. (Congdon may have talked to Mira a few times and received some letters from her but otherwise seems to have wisely avoided getting himself caught in the middle of the dispute.) Alfred also complained about her spending habits over the last year. In 1939 he had agreed to her spending extra money in order to set up her painting studio/apartment. This amount was over and above the regular amount Alfred was giving to her as a monthly stipend for her rent and daily expenses. (She got extra money as well from Alfred’s book royalties, which he considered her due.) She had intended to pay back this ‘loan’ within the next year and she did. She felt Alfred had no right to complain.

With all their problems, they didn’t stop communicating. When Mira wouldn’t answer the phone for fear of a tirade from Alfred, he would write to her. Pearl would also call or come by to take her to the bank, give her news of the Institute, or drop off something Alfred wanted her to see. In the first week of October Pearl dropped off a draft of Alfred’s “Introduction” for Mira to read. Alfred wanted to rub in the point, as he wrote in a letter to her then, that she had very little understanding of what serious writing entailed. He would not dare to publish anything he had not painstakingly edited first. This, the tenth draft, still didn’t satisfy him. (By this time, the text of the Second Edition was already printed and the “Introduction”, the manuscript of which he finally sent off to Science Press in mid-November, remained the chief thing to be done.)

Mira could admit that Alfred had some reasonable points to make about her behavior. But did he have to be so hard on her? He threw up to her things she had previously said and done that he might better have forgiven and forgotten. He blamed her for other things too. For example, he wrote to her that her 1936 ‘broadcast’ had been responsible for their current financial mess by planting a seed of alienation in Campbell and—through him—in Crane. But did responsibility for what happened in 1936 lay solely on Mira’s shoulders? And how could he know that Crane’s withdrawal from the Institute had anything much to do with that whole sorry episode? Worrying about money and how he was going to keep a roof over either of their heads, Alfred seemed too distressingly busy as 1940 came to a close, to be able to hear Mira’s side of things. It didn’t help that he wasn’t feeling well. What seemed like a bad cold turned into pneumonia. It laid him low and lingered on into the spring of 1941, though for the most part he kept on working.

The Institute’s problems at the end of the year were not due to lack of recognition. The response of the psychiatric and mental health communities had been outstanding. New university courses incorporating GS continued to get organized. Articles about Korzybski and his work were being published in professional journals, magazines, and the daily press. The 1940 version of Hayakawa’s Language in Action had gotten favorable reviews. 

In June a short book by Aldous Huxley, Words And Their Meanings, had come out which gave more attention to Korzybski’s work. Huxley, a resident of Los Angeles, had first read Science and Sanity in 1938. He wrote then to his brother Julian:

“Have you read Korzybski’s Science and Sanity? If not, I think you shd—in spite of the fact that the author is maddening and his book 800 pp long. For he does seem to have said things about ‘Semantics’—the relation of words to things and events—which are of the highest importance. And incidentally he seems to have read practically everything.” (22) 

In Los Angeles, the movie world had also discovered Korzybski. In 1939 screenwriter and producer Robert Lord had read Science and Sanity, written some articles about it in Rob Wagner’s Script, a Los Angeles-based magazine along the lines of The New Yorker, and had attended the 1939 Winter Intensive seminar. Lord was helping the Institute with a monthly donation and, along with some of Korzybski’s other Los Angeles students, may have been one of those responsible for getting a number of Hollywood actors and actresses interested as well. 

Korzybski’s work figured prominently in Oliver Reiser’s book The Promise of Scientific Humanism, published at year’s end. Topping the 1940 publicity for the Institute, the national magazine Newsweek published an article “A Healer of Mental Muddles” with a photograph of Korzybski in the “Education” section of its December 30 issue.

Unfortunately all this publicity had so far not translated into adequate funding and Korzybski was struggling just to keep the Institute afloat. As he wrote to Mrs. Dewing, “...we have got more recognition than could possibly be expected, except that most of the people we are dealing with are of very limited means, so we have recognition but very little money.”(23) As for the muddle between him and Mira, it seemed anything but healed. By the beginning of 1941, Mira wanted no more of her no-win situation with Alfred. She decided to leave Chicago. 

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. 

11. AK to Cornelius Crane, 6/3/1939. IGS Archives. 

12. “Poles Gather Data On ‘Pillage’ By Foes”, New York Times, Jan. 19, 1940. 

13. MEK to AK, 6/13/1940. AK Archives, Box 22, Folder 6.491. 

14. Korzybski 1994 (1933). “Introduction To The Second Edition 1941”, p. lxix. 

15. “When Where and How do you see Red?” AK Archives, Box 22, Folder 4. 

16. AK to C.B. Congdon, 8/18/1940. IGS Archives. 

17. MEK to AK, 8/17/1940. AK Archives, Box 22.6.467. 

18. Allen Walker Read. “Changing Attitudes Toward Korzybski’s General Semantics”. General Semantics Bulletin 51, p. 12. 

19. Allen Walker Read having tea at “The Honeypot”, Pevensey Bay, England, July 11, 1954. Photograph by Charlotte Schuchardt Read. IGS Archives. 

20. Allen Walker Read. “A Personal Journey Through Linguistics” in Allen Walker Read 2002, p. 307. 

21. Ibid., p. 309. 

22. Aldous Huxley to Julian Huxley, July 22, 1938. in Smith 1969, p. 436. 

23. AK to F. Dewing, 9/10/1940. IGS Archives.

< Part 3

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Chapter 52 - "Recognition But Very Little Money": Part 3 - Sanity Update

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.

He considered his conference paper an important project. Entitling it “General Semantics, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Prevention”, he managed to get an extra ten minutes to present it (over the usual twenty minute allotment for such papers). Douglas Campbell, also presenting a GS-related paper, and Adolf Meyer were picked to discuss his paper afterwards. Korzybski had already been working on the various changes and additions to the front matter for the Second Edition of Science and Sanity. With new copies of the book no longer available, back orders were accumulating. Getting out a new edition seemed urgent. His paper for the psychiatric conference would serve as a prototype for the main job he needed to do for the Second Edition—a new Introduction.

In both, he would present an updated picture of his work with the refinements and sharpened formulations he had developed since 1933. In the psychiatry paper he would include more detail about the preventive, educational work he and his students had done with groups and individuals, giving a number of examples to show the application of his evaluation-oriented epistemology to personal problems that psychiatrists were apt to view as strictly medical. (These, as well as a number of other illustrative examples, plus a couple of diagrams, and a table showing the differences between aristotelian and non-aristotelian orientations all got deleted from the abridged version of the paper published in the September 1941 American Journal of Psychiatry.) He also addressed the role he thought psychiatry and general semantics should play in the developing war-related complex of world problems.

Only a few days after the invasion of Poland the previous September, Korzybski had sent letters to the Polish government-in-exile, and to British and U.S. government officials—including President Roosevelt—explaining that role:

Today newspapers everywhere, except in Germany call Hitler a mad man, etc., ...Name-calling, to which politicians and newswriters are making us so accustomed, will, of course, be ineffective in the long run. The Institute of General Semantics suggests that the respective governments stop calling names, and call experts. By experts, in this case, we mean competent professional psychiatrists...to sit as a sanity tribunal. After studying all the available data, furnished by the governments, this psychiatric tribunal would, without doubt, technically speaking, unanimously establish the ‘insanity’ of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, etc. ...We in the Institute feel that if such a professional verdict of psychiatrists would be published and distributed by governments, it would stop the ‘insanity’ of the present situation. This would become the most powerful verbal weapon to break the spell of Hitlerism. It is not realized what a profound psycho-logical effect such a diagnosis would have on the people, particularly in Europe...The Institute of General Semantics is willing to offer all the professional help eventually needed, but we are not in a position to undertake such activities on our own. (6) 

As he later noted he “received only two polite acknowledgements” to these letters.(7) Still, he would repeat the suggestion and elaborate upon it throughout the duration of the war and afterwards.

One of the things he would emphasize both in the psychiatry paper and the “Introduction to the Second Edition” was the importance of “New factors: [and] the havoc they play with our generalizations.”(8) If medicine and the behavioral/social sciences needed psychiatry, then psychiatry, in turn, needed GS. In particular, the new factors—as he had formulated them—of “our neuro-semantic (neuro-evaluational) and neuro-linguistic environments as environment”(9) seemed to him crucial for psychiatrists and governmental leaders to take seriously.

In his paper for the psychiatric conference, Korzybski recommended the expansion of the sanity tribunal he had suggested in his earlier letter to leaders. The Germans under Hitler showed a notable ability to use “pathological verbal distortion” and other propagandistic and psychological methods as part of its ‘war of nerves’ against the allies. (Korzybski would soon refer to this in his “Introduction to the Second Edition” as the Nazi ‘war on nerves’.) The ‘sick’ Nazi, Fascist, and Japanese governments at least intuitively understood the importance of shaping the neuro-linguistic and neuro-evaluational environments, even if they didn’t formulate exactly in those terms. To this end, the Nazis, et al, purposely employed psycho-logical methods against their enemies. As he saw it, the governments of the so-called free world needed to marshal their psychiatrists and other experts in human behavior—including advisors in GS—to consciously counteract these methods and fight back with their own explicit neuro-evaluational, neuro-linguistic means.(10) 

Korzybski estimated that something like five hundred people attended his talk and he felt happy with his reception at the conference. As he wrote to Crane soon afterwards, he found the people he met there “very warm and friendly and interested.” Despite this, the bad war news weighed painfully upon him, though it also seemed to goad him to continue his hard work. As he noted to Crane (trying to goad him as well):

The first World War ruined me financially, very considerably, and I was also injured physically, for which I am still paying the price. The recent annihilation of Poland deprived me of the rest...I have seen too many dead and dying, too much destruction and suffering, not to realize what it all means for the future hence my investigations of factors of proper evaluation, predictability, sanity, etc., ...You may understand at present, judging by facts, why the work of the Institute is now, more than ever, of such extreme human importance.(11)

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. 

6. AK to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 9/7/1939. IGS Archives. 

7. “Introduction to the Second Edition 1941” in Korzybski 1994 (1933), p. lxxvii. 

8. Ibid., p. lv. 

9. Ibid., p. lvi. 

10. “General Semantics, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy And Prevention”, American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 98 (2), September, 1941. p. 213. Reprinted in Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, p. 306–307.

11. AK to Cornelius Crane, 6/3/1939. IGS Archives.

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Chapter 52 - "Recognition But Very Little Money": Part 2 - A Good Name

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.

If a good name was better than riches, then things were not going too badly for Korzybski in the Spring of 1940. In March the Institute presented, to the press and public, its progress-report/pamphlet, “A Memorandum”, which showed the impressive first two years of IGS accomplishments. Among other things, it contained the list of men who had so far agreed to become Honorary Trustees of the Institute, which gave a sample of the support Korzybski had garnered among academic and professional workers. The list included notables such as: Thurman Arnold, Gaston Bachelard, Maxim Bing, Abraham Brill, Ross McC. Chapman, George E. Coghill, Arthur Stone Dewing, Franklin Ebaugh, P. H. Esser, David Fairchild, Clarence B. Farrar, William Healy, Lancelot Hogben, Earnest Hooten, Smith Ely Jeliffe, Edward Kasner, Cassius Keyser, Nolan D.C. Lewis, Ralph S. Lillie, Bronislaw Malinowski, Adolf Meyer, Winfred Overholser, Stewart Paton, Raymond Pearl, William F. Peterson, Roscoe Pound, George S. Stevenson, M. Tramer, Walter L. Treadway, and Richard Weil, Jr. Some of them he knew. Some he hadn’t met in person. But personal friend or not, their support seemed eager and heartfelt. The group included a law professor, an Assistant U.S. Attorney General, a business executive, a professor of finance, a professor of philosophy, two anthropologists, three mathematicians, five biologists, and sixteen medical doctors. A professor of pathology, a public health administrator, and fourteen psychiatrists comprised this latter group. The psychiatrists included some of the most revered and respected names in the profession. 

Among those on the list, anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski did not seem exceptional in his enthusiasm for Korzybski and his work. He expressed this in a letter he wrote to Korzybski on December 20, 1939, which also gave a sense of his own (and Alfred’s) feelings at that time about the unfolding war and the fate of their beloved Poland:

Dear Alfred,  

Of Course I accept the honour of being associated with you [and] your work as Hon. Trustee. I’d be glad to act as OfficeBoy, if you needed one—though I’d not be an efficient O.B. 

I fully agree with your sentiments ab. the Anglo-Saxon world [and] also the importance of Science and Sanity—both in abstract [and] concrete sense in our crisis.  

I am pessimistic as you are, but a fight is better than a fall into the void of defeatism. Were I not so old I’d still go back there just to get smashed up or smart. But alas for both of us only the spirit remains! And Spirit is at a discount now.  

...We shall meet soon, as I may be in Chic and shall ring you up at once... (3)

Richard Weil, Jr., President of the Bamberger department store chain, having studied Science and Sanity, had corresponded with Korzybski for about a year. In his own 1940 book, The Art of Practical Thinking, he was introducing Korzybski’s work to a business-oriented audience:

I have said that Korzybski is a genius. If you are the average reader, to whom I originally addressed myself, you must, for a time, take my word for this. If it be only a short time, which is what I hope for, it will be simply until you have implemented yourself in the armory of thinking to the point where you can read Korzybski with understanding and yourself take his measure. If it be for a longer time, posterity, as is its custom, will perform this service for you, posthumously: that is, long after you will be unable [sic] to reap the benefits. (4) 

Gaston Bachelard’s 1934 book Le Nouvel Esprit Scientifique, which Korzybski had gotten, already showed the French epistemologist as a compatible formulator. Since he had written that book, Bachelard had come to know Korzybski’s work and to give it considerable importance. The following excerpt (part of a larger discussion of Korzybski and his work) comes from the English translation of Bachelard’s 1940 book La Philosophie du Non: Essai d’une philosophie de nouvel esprit scientifique. (A translation of this done by a student of Korzybski’s, G. C. Waterston, was published in the U.S. in 1969 as The Philosophy of No: A Philosophy of the New Scientific Mind.):

Those of us who are trying to find new ways of thinking, must direct ourselves towards the most complicated structures. We must take advantage of all the lessons of science, however special they may be, to determine new mental structures. We must realize that the possession of a form of thought is automatically a reform of the mind. We must therefore direct our researches towards a new pedagogy. In this direction, which has attracted us personally for a number of years, we shall take as our guide the very important work of the non-Aristotelian school, founded in America by Korzybski, which is so little known in France...The psychological and even physiological conditions of a non-Aristotelian logic have been resolutely faced in the great work of Count Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity,... (5)  

The large number of psychiatrists on the Honorary Trustee list didn’t get there by accident. Korzybski had targeted psychiatrists as an audience for a number of years, since he felt that his extensional method and theory of sanity had important, though still undeveloped, implications for their work. The willingness of so many important psychiatrists to associate themselves with him by serving as Honorary Trustees surely must have gratified him, as did the invitation he received—unusual for a non-psychiatrist—to give a presentation at the upcoming conference of the American Psychiatric Association from May 20 to 24 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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. 

3. Bronislaw Malinowski to AK, 12/20/1939. IGS Archives. 

4. Weil 1940, p. 71. 

5. Bachelard 1940, p. 108.

< Part 1     Part 3 >

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Chapter 52 - "Recognition But Very Little Money": 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.

Crane had bolted from his commitment to the Institute. Even by January 5, 1940, that had become increasingly, disturbingly clear. Dr. Ischclondsky, passing through Chicago on his way from New York City to Los Angeles, called that day to report on a recent conversation he’d had with Crane, having finally bumped into the philanthropist after not seeing him for several months. Pearl took notes over the phone. Crane had told the psychiatrist that he would continue to provide the money—to be disbursed by the Institute—for the translation of Ischlondsky’s book. Not very reassuring. Crane, whom Ischlondsky admittedly didn’t know very well, seemed more “correct”, i.e., formal, than the psychiatrist had recalled from previous meetings. Crane also mentioned financial problems. He would have “to restrict all his financial obligations because for 1940 it is all filled up.” Ishchlondsky opined that Crane might become more agreeable in the future and advised that “the Institute should not break contact with him.”(1) 

But Crane, not Korzybski, was breaking the contact. Although both Korzybski and Kendig would continue to write to him, Crane would no longer communicate directly with either of them. He turned over that job to his lawyer who sent his first letter to Korzybski at the end of January.

A small item with the headline, “Sues for Divorce”, in the Chicago Daily Tribune, of Tuesday, February 20, soon clarified Crane’s “financial obligations”: “Mrs. Cathalene Parker Browning Crane filed suit in Circuit court yesterday for a divorce from Cornelius Crane...The Cranes were married Oct. 15, 1929, at Newark, N.J. ...She charges Crane deserted her Feb. 1, 1936.” The clipped article went into Korzybski’s file folder of Crane-related items and correspondence, along with this Daily Tribune article from two days later: “Mrs. Cathalene Parker Crane was granted a divorce yesterday from Cornelius Crane,...Under terms of the agreement...she is to receive $25,000 a year for life, regardless of possible remarriage, and her daughter, Cathalene, 16 years old, is to receive $5,000 a year for life.”(2)

The correspondence between Korzybski and Crane’s lawyer went back and forth for several months. Finally in April, the lawyer sent a contract and release for Korzybski to sign, which formalized what he had already told Korzybski in previous letters. Crane and/or his lawyer seemed concerned about the guarantee Crane had signed for the rent on 1234 E. 56th Street; the Institute lease extended until 1944. The lawyer wanted Korzybski to agree to Crane giving the Institute just $10,000 more—$8,400 to get doled out monthly for the next four years in $175 increments for paying rent, with the small remaining difference to be paid forthwith to the Institute. In addition, he wanted Korzybski to release Crane of any other obligations to the Institute. According to the lawyer, this contract simply confirmed Crane’s original commitment to the Institute.

Korzybski politely but firmly refused to go along with this. From his point of view the lawyer had not represented things accurately. As he had already told Crane, he had never wanted Crane to pay the rent. He had asked him to sign a guarantee simply to make it easier to get a long-term lease from a reluctant landlord. As for what Crane had previously agreed to do, it was true: he had not committed himself in writing. But he had clearly stated at board meetings, and implied elsewhere, that he would give semi-annual payments of $10,000 to the Institute until July 1940. Korzybski felt that these commitments had legal standing. As Korzybski saw it, Crane had a binding obligation to give the Institute $10,000 immediately (the amount past due from January 1), with an additional final payment of $10,000 for July 1, 1940. Crane had also promised a yearly supplement to Kendig’s salary and Korzybski expected him to make good on that promise at least one more time as well. Altogether, Korzybski expected Crane to honor his commitment to give the Institute $20,750 more.

The Institute’s attorney, Samuel Clawson, had joined the Board of Trustees to replace Crane. He would continue negotiations with Crane’s attorney. And Alfred would continue to write to Crane about the Institute and its doings. He still hoped to persuade Crane to follow through on his initial obligation. And he hoped to do this sooner rather than later, for the very existence of the Institute was now in peril.

Even with Crane’s contributions, the Institute had been operating very close to the bone. The Institute’s earned income, mostly from Korzybski’s seminars, averaged a bit less than a third of what it needed to survive. Without Crane’s two remaining payments, the projected income would only suffice to pay the rent and some of the operating expenses for the rest of the year. How was Alfred going to get the money for other operating costs as well as for salaries—the main expense? Clearly, to maximize income he would have to keep to the grueling schedule of seven seminars for the year. Furthermore he would have to cut costs by letting go clerical staff other than Pearl Johnecheck and Charlotte Schuchardt, who both supposedly worked ‘part-time’. He and Kendig also would have to take half salaries. He had already started to draw money from the Institute savings-account reserves. In order to keep a positive balance there, he would have to borrow money from Mira and his hardly ample private accounts.

A private appeal was made to some of Alfred’s closest students who might have financial means to help. A number of them stepped forward. One, Frances Hall Rousmaniere Dewing, began to give a substantial monthly donation. Mrs. Dewing, as Korzybski addressed her in letters, had studied with Josiah Royce and in 1906 was one of the first women to graduate from Radcliffe with a PhD (in philosophy and psychology). She and the rest of her family had definitely become enamored with Korzybski’s work. Her husband, Arthur Stone Dewing—a retired professor of corporate finance at Harvard who had also studied with Royce—had already attended one seminar. Their daughter Mary— a social worker studying anthropology at the University of Chicago—had attended three. As for Mrs. Dewing, although she lived in Newton, Massachusetts, she was staying in Chicago to attend Korzybski’s 1940 January-February evening seminar. She soon returned to attend his next evening seminar as well, which ran through the month of April. The financial crisis, which began at the start of 1940, would last until the end of 1941. Without the Dewings’ support, Korzybski might have had to close the Institute. With it and the additional donations of others, Korzybski was able—in a piecemeal fashion—to fill the gap left by Crane’s withdrawal. Mrs. Dewing also paid a salary for Anne Cleveland, a young woman who had grown up with her daughter and with whom she felt close. Anne had gone to some seminars already and Mrs. Dewing seemed to feel she needed some personal direction that Alfred could give her. Anne would continue to work as a secretary at the Institute for several years.

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. Transcript labeled “Telephone Conversation. Report of Ischlondsky On Crane. (Rough semi-verbatim report)”, 1/5/1940. IGS Archives. 

2. Cornelius Crane files, IGS Archives.

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Chapter 51 - Nothing To Do But Continue

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.

On September 1, the day of Korzybski’s last August 1939 Seminar lecture, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. He had seen it coming. English translations of Mein Kampf had become readily available by the start of 1939 and he had been telling his students to prepare themselves by reading the book for insight into German intentions. The week the seminar started, newspapers had covered the visit to Moscow of German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. A few days before Korzybski’s first lecture, Ribbentrop and the Soviet foreign minister Molotov—with a smiling Stalin behind them—had signed a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact (also known as the Hitler-Stalin pact) leaving both nations free, for a start, to aggress against Poland. At his first lecture on August 25, Korzybski predicted how the war would begin. A writer from the Chicago Daily News attended, and the next day reported what Korzybski said (Kendig’s notes from the lecture confirm the newspaper account):

...Never in the history of the world has civilization been so seriously menaced by the threat of paranoic rulers....Hitler and his henchmen have been outwitting their opponents with the cleverness of the monkey or the paranoic...It is not their intention to ‘declare war’ on Poland. They intend to send in a ‘police force’ to protect the ‘German minority’. (1) 

The Nazis did just that. On August 31, the SS collected a bunch of German convicts, dressed them in Polish uniforms, and staged a phony assault by them on a German radio station in the town of Gleiwitz near the Polish border. After a brief broadcast in Polish, the SS ‘recaptured’ the station, marched the hapless convicts outside, and machine-gunned them down, leaving their Polish-uniformed corpses as evidence of the ‘attack’. The Nazis now had an excuse to ‘defend’ Germany from Polish ‘aggression’ and ‘protect’ the German minority in Poland.

Early in the morning of September 1, a German battleship fired the first shots of the war on the Polish garrison in Danzig. This was followed in a few hours by a Blitzkreig attack from the west: one and a half million German troops and two thousand tanks streamed into Poland while the Luftwaffe sent in waves of aircraft for strafing and bombing runs. Polish civilians were deliberately targeted along with Polish troops. The British and French governments had signed a common defense pact with Poland but although they both declared war against Germany on September 3, they failed to help the Polish forces. Then on September 17, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, as Stalin and Molotov had agreed to do in the secret protocol that accompanied the ‘non-aggression’ pact. By the end of the month, the Nazis and Soviets had divided the country. The Soviets accepted a smaller portion of Poland, east of the Bug River in exchange for the Baltic states (including Finland) which they wished to take over. The remnant of the Polish army was scattered, captured, or driven out. The brutalizing of Poland by both Germans and Russians was well underway.

On top of his dismay at the onset of a worldwide war and the general sorry state of homo sapiens (whom he said should be called “homo the sap”), Korzybski felt terribly distressed at the fate of his ravaged homeland. He had suddenly been cut off from friends and relatives and other contacts in Poland. But through his connections with various Polish organizations in the United States and the free remnant of Europe, he would do his best to learn what was happening there in forthcoming years. Otherwise, there was nothing to do but continue along the path he’d been treading. Democracy had to be defended. He didn’t want the barbarians to win. He felt he had something important to offer in the fight against them. The survival of democracy presupposed intelligence—a quality the leadership (governmental, business, academic, etc.) of the so-called free world seemed to seriously lack. Without such intelligence—not just facts crammed in school—things indeed looked hopeless. The dire situation called for a system of standards and a set of methods for developing effective practical education for intelligence in a sufficient number of individuals to make a difference that could make a difference.(2)  That’s what he was selling. He would be working even harder to deliver the goods.

One good he would have to deliver very soon was a second edition of Science and Sanity. Almost 3,000 books had been sold, orders continued to come in, and the second printing of the first edition would soon be exhausted. By the end of the August seminar, Science Press reported they had only 140 copies left.(3) It didn’t seem necessary to revise the text. Despite a great deal of new scientific knowledge, the methodological data he had based his work upon hadn’t significantly changed. So the main part of the second edition could be run off from the existing printer’s plates. However, he wanted to add some new front material. Since 1933, he had refined some of the formulations, devised new ones, and learned a great deal about applications from teaching seminars and working with individuals. It seemed time to put his work into a fresh framework for the coming decade. He had new books to add to a supplementary bibliography. He had some things to say about the war. He also wanted to deal with the growing confusion between ‘semantics’ and ‘general semantics’. He had gotten clearer about the inadequacy of talking about ‘meaning’. To emphasize his work as a theory of human evaluation he would have to disassociate it from the work of Ogden and Richards, for example. The epigraph he had taken from their book The Meaning of Meaning would have to go and he needed something to replace it. In addition, he now had a chance to revise the listings for the International Non-Aristotelian Library, both the “Volumes In Preparation” and those whose authors were to be announced later. He hoped to get Campbell, Congdon, Polakov, and others to commit themselves to books they would write.

But this was getting a bit ahead of things. He had other more immediate priorities. First he and Kendig were putting together a memorandum on the first two years of the Institute. Since its founding, Korzybski had taught 250 students in 11 seminars (the Holiday Intensive at the end of December would make 12). Kendig was compiling a list of the academic institutions and the various fields represented by the students, as well as a summary of the sales statistics and geographical distribution of the first edition of Science and Sanity. Korzybski wrote a brief description of other GS courses, new publications, and the results and mechanism of training. A description of the various formats of the IGS seminar and a tentative schedule for 1940 were also included. On the opening page, they decided to put a picture of the front of the Institute building and another of the August Intensive group. With a list of monographs, articles, and books for sale by the Institute and an order form insert in the back, they basically had an Institute brochure for the interested public. It could also be sent, along with a press release, to scientific journals and the general press.(4) A preliminary version of the memorandum had been prepared for Institute board members for the annual meeting originally scheduled in October. Korzybski was also sending copies to those he was in the process of inviting to become Honorary Trustees (a list of whom was included in the final version of the memorandum). On October 20, Kendig sent a copy of the memorandum to Cornelius Crane along with a brief note asking him when he could come for another meeting, which they had decided to defer until some time in December when both he and Campbell presumably could attend.

Crane had communicated little since attending the March 1939 board meeting, although they did get the expected $10,000 check from him by the second week of July. Otherwise Korzybski had heard nothing from him since getting a letter in mid-August. (Crane wrote then that he might consider giving more money to the Institute after July 1940.) Korzybski did his best to keep Crane informed about Institute doings. In August he sent a financial report that Crane had requested. In September, Kendig sent a long newsy letter. On October 26, Korzybski got a typed letter signed by Crane in New York City, perhaps stimulated by the note and memorandum Kendig had just sent:

Dear Alfred:  

I have been thinking over the matter for several months and have decided to resign as Vice President and Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics.  

This decision has nothing to do with the scientific side of the work, but is a purely personal matter. I will be glad, if you wish me, to continue the same financial arrangement with the Institute until the first of July, 1940, but thereafter the Institute must do its own financing.  

With best wishes for the continued success of your work, I am,

Sincerely yours, 

Cornelius Crane 

P.S. I will be glad to receive any publications you put out from time to time. (5)

Although Korzybski knew a lot about Crane’s personal problems (having counseled him in the past), he couldn’t know what Crane meant by “a purely personal matter.” But the letter didn’t bode well. Concerned about the influence on others if it appeared that Crane was suddenly dropping the Institute, he wrote back asking Crane to at least hold off his resignation until after July 1, 1940. He also asked Crane to maintain his connection to the Institute in other ways. For one thing, he wanted Crane to become an Honorary Trustee. Crane had promised two more endowment checks. Until they could get some other funding sources, Korzybski felt very concerned about how they were going to tide over the Institute after July 1. As a consequence, as he told Crane, he was adding more seminars to the 1940 schedule—for a total of seven once again—in order to make more money (so much for more time to attend to other Institute business). He still wanted to have a regular board meeting Crane could attend, to personally take care of the matters surrounding Crane’s resignation. (6) 

Crane replied that he would be glad to become an Honorary Trustee. But he would not be able to attend any forthcoming meeting and didn’t think it would harm the Institute for his resignation to go ahead. Indeed, he wrote, “I must make it a condition of sending the Institute any further funds, that the Board of Trustees send me before the end of 1939 an official acceptance of my resignation.”(7) 

Kendig sent a copy of Hayakawa’s new book to Crane at the end of November and a newsy note to him at the beginning of December. A week later, Korzybski wrote to him again—more news (a list of eighteen prominent men had already agreed to become Honorary Trustees) and an expression of his concern for Crane:

Speaking to you as my student and, I hope, my friend, I am sort of worried about you. I believe you are in the midst of some personal difficulties and I would like to help you, if we ever have a chance to get together again, which somehow you seem to evade. (8) 

Regarding the business of Crane’s resignation, Douglas Campbell couldn’t get to Chicago just then, so Korzybski, Congdon, and Kendig would have to hold a meeting before Christmas to act on it. Would Crane write a formal resignation that could be placed in the minutes? Korzybski hoped Crane would reconsider and make his resignation effective in mid-1940 rather than at the end of the year.

Crane had not yet responded when Korzybski, Congdon, and Kendig met for their truncated Board of Trustees meeting on December 19. Their main business was to pass a motion to accept Crane’s resignation with regret “to take effect on June 30, 1940, or at any other date which Mr. Crane might indicate as more acceptable to him.” As part of the motion they urged Crane “to withdraw his resignation and remain on the active board.” Korzybski also announced Crane’s “acceptance of the invitation to become an Honorary Trustee at whatever time his resignation may take effect.”(9) Campbell had been very busy studying for specialist board exams, but if his presence as a Trustee was needed later, he’d be in Chicago since he planned to attend the Holiday Intensive from December 27 to January 2.

At the end of December 1939, a great deal occupied Korzybski besides his problems with Crane. Among other things, in September he had submitted an abstract for a paper accepted for the December meeting of the American Mathematics Society at Columbus, Ohio. The abstract was for the third and last of his series “General Semantics: Extensionalization in Mathematics, Mathematical Physics, and General Education”. He had developed a new formulation for Paper III on “Over/Under Defined Terms”. Without the use of extensional methods, most terms could be considered as over-defined by intension or verbalism while under-defined by extension or fact. He hoped to print this together with the first two papers as the second IGS monograph. He made a quick bus trip to Columbus before Christmas to make his presentation. (He must have done it from notes because only the abstract remains.) He immediately returned to Chicago, just in time to start the Holiday seminar, and had no time to deal with the letter from Crane, dated December 23, he had just received. In no uncertain terms, Crane said he would send no further funds until he received an official letter accepting his immediate resignation both as an active Board Trustee and Honorary Trustee. Although he was still seeing people for interviews, Korzybski called a Trustees meeting (including Campbell) for January 3, the day after his last lecture. That very day he sent Crane a personal note as well as the official letter. He had done what Crane had asked. He hoped Crane was not making a complete break with him and the Institute. But as the days progressed, the next check did not arrive.

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 quoted in “Hitler’s ‘Insane’ Cleverness Likened to That of Monkey”. The Chicago Daily News, Saturday, Aug. 26, 1939 by Gene Morgan. AKDA 41.57. 

2. Korzybski. Five Lectures on General Semantics. Los Angeles Society for General Semantics, June 1939. Unpublished. IGS Archives. 

3. Kendig to Crane, 9/2/1939. IGS Archives. 

4. “A Memorandum on the Institute of General Semantics”, in Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, pp. 277-293. 

5. Cornelius Crane to AK, 10/26/1939. IGS Archives. 

6. AK to Cornelius Crane, 10/31/1939. IGS Archives. 

7. Cornelius Crane to AK, 11/12/1939. IGS Archives. 

8. AK to Cornelius Crane, 12/8/1939. IGS Archives. 

9. Minutes of Trustee Meeting, December 19, 1939. IGS Archives.

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