Quotes from Alfred Korzybski

Logic is the youth of mathematics, mathematics is the manhood of logic." This brilliant mot of the eminent philosopher of mathematics is no

My contention is that while progress in some of the great matters of human concern has been long proceeding in accordance with the law of a rapidly increasing geometric progression, progress in the other matters of no less importance has advanced only at the rate of an arithmetical progression or at best at the rate of some geometric progression of relatively slow growth. To see it and to understand it we have to pay the small price of a little observation and a little meditation.

At present I am chiefly concerned to drive home the fact that it is the great disparity between the rapid progress of the natural and technological sciences on the one hand and the slow progress of the metaphysical, so-called social "sciences" on the other hand, that sooner or later so disturbs the equilibrium of human affairs as to result periodically in those social cataclysms which we call insurrections, revolutions and wars.

Early ideas are not necessarily true ideas.

The difficulty is not merely that of destroying old ideas that are false; it is not merely that of replacing them with true ideas that are new; it is that of causing people habitually to associate meanings that are new and true with terms associated so long, so universally, so uniformly with meanings that are false.

From the early days of humanity, dogmatic theology, law, ethics, and science in its infancy, were the monopolies of one class and the source of their power.4

Ethics is too fundamentally important a factor in civilization to depend upon a theological or a legal excuse; [pg 035] ethics must conform to the natural laws of human nature.

Law was always made by the few and in general for the purpose of preserving the "existing order," or for the reestablishment of the old order and the punishment of the offenders against

Dogmatic theology is, by its very nature, unchangeable. The same can be said in regard to the spirit of the law. Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature.5

34. "Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for distinction's sake) we have assigned names, calling the first Idols of the Tribe, the second Idols of the Den, the third Idols of the Market, the fourth Idols of the Theatre.

41. "The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man; for man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.

Another very serious mechanism of identification is found in language. A) Thus we have only one name, say 'apple' for the: (a)un-speakable, un-eatable event or scientific process; (b) the un-speakable but eatable abstraction of low order, the object; (c) the un-speakable and un-eatable 'mental' picture, or higher order abstraction, on semantic levels; (d) and for a definition on verbal levels.

An ideal map would contain the map of the map, the map of the map of the map.,endlessly. This characteristic was first discovered by Royce. We may call it self-reflexiveness.

It is obvious that the "unit"—inch—has no value by itself, but is very precious as a unit for measuring the phenomenon of length, which it perfectly represents, and that is why it was introduced.

What is achieved in blaming a man for being selfish and greedy if he acts under the influence of a social environment and education which teach him that he is an animal and that selfishness and greediness are of the essence of his nature?

For this reason, it is useless to argue who is the more important, the capitalist who has legal possession of most of the material fruit of dead men's toil, or the laborer who has legal possession of but little of it. In the laborer, we do not now really look for his physical muscular labor alone; for this is replaced by mechanical or animal power as soon as [pg 108] it can be. What we do need from labor, and what we will always need, is his brain—his time-binding power.

Why not? Because humans through their time-binding capacity are first of all creators and so their number is not controlled by the supply of unaided nature, but only by men's artificial productivity, which is the materialization of their time-binding capacity

The energy of a body which is due to its position, is called potential energy. The energy of a body which is due to its motion, is called kinetic energy.

We start with the negative [non-Aristotelian] premise that words are not the un-speakable objective level, such as the actual objects outside of our skin and our personal feelings inside our skin. It follows that the only link between the objective and the verbal world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all 'knowledge' is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex pf relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order.

Money is not the wealth of a nation, but production is wealth; so ordered production is the main object for humanity. But to have the maximum of production, it is necessary to have production put on a sound basis. No mere preaching of brotherly love, or class hatred, will produce one single brick for the building of the future temple of human victory—the temple of human civilization. Ordered production demands analysis of basic facts.

This era is essentially an industrial era. To produce we have to have: (1) raw material or soil; (2) instruments for production—tools and machines; and (3) the application of power.

As a matter of fact we live in a world in which non-identity is as entirely general as gravitation, and so every identification is bound to be in some degree a mis-evaluation. In a four-dimentional world where 'every geometrical point has a date,' even an 'electron' at different dates is not identical with itself, because the sub-microscopic processes actually going on in this world cannot empirically be stopped but only transformed.

All foods which the animals as well as the humans use are, already, the result of the solar energy transformed into what may be called chemical energy. Transformation of energies is building up of life.

It must not be lost sight of in this connection that the human class of life is a part and a product of nature, and that, therefore, there must be fundamental laws which are natural for this class of life. A stone obeys the natural laws of stones; a liquid conforms to the natural law of liquids; a plant, to the natural laws of plants; an animal, to the natural laws of animals; it follows inevitably that there must be natural laws for humans.