In constructive process...
In this essay, we will begin to explore two different areas of DGB Epistemology: 1. DGB Cognitive Theory; and 2. DGB Dialectic Theory; and 3. the synthesis of these two ideas: DGB Cognitive-Dialectic Theory.
You can see the three different areas or components of 'The Hegelian Dialectic Cycle' here: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; and 3. synthesis.
DGB Philosophy holds the belief -- in standard Hegelian style -- that whenever two theories stand in opposition to each other, and both seem to have an element of 'truth' and/or 'value' in them, the reality of the situation is such that both probably do have and an element of both 'truth' and 'value' in them -- even as they seemingly contradict each other -- and in effect the two polar or differential theories are crying for a good 'Hegelian' or 'post-Hegelian' philosopher (or set of philosophers, set of philosopher-business-men(women), set of philosopher-politicians, etc. such as Parliament and/or The Senate, and/or The Senate and House of Representatives) to enter the situation and work on the two theories -- dialectically and democratically -- negotiate their respective strengths and weaknesses -- and start to synthesize them, in the process, coming up with an integrative theory that is superior to either of the two paradoxical, polar, and/or differential theories or philosphies standing on its own.
This is the heart of Hegelian Dialectic Theory. And it is also the heart of DGB Post-Hegelian Dialectic Theory. The only difference between the two is about '200 years of further evolution' in which DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy has integrated some elements of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, 'Enligtenment-Romanticism', 'Apollonian-Dionysianism', 'Subjective-Objectivism', 'Free-Will-Determinism, Freud, Adler, Jung, Perls, Sartre, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Foucault, Derrida, Branden, Rand, and others...along the way to where I sit right now...
DGB Post-Hegelian Dialectic Theory is basically more of a 'free-will-determinist-humanistic-existential' theory than Classic Hegelian Dialectic Theory. 'Free-will' and 'Determinism' are two polar theories whereby DGB Dialectic Theory splits the difference and integrates the two theories. Similarly, 'Humanism' and 'Existentialism' -- in DGB Philosophy at least -- are two polar theories, the first emphasizing 'compassion and empathy' and the second emphasizing 'existential accountability' whereby DGB Dialectic Theory again splits the difference and integrates the two theories.
One can easily see how -- politically -- Hegelian Dialectic Theory became split between 'Left-Wing Hegelian Dialectic Theory' and 'Right Wing Hegelian Dialectic Theory. Indeed, Hegel has often been at least partly blamed for 'Left Wing Marxist Dialectic Extremism' and at the same time, 'Right Wing Nazi-Fascist Dialectic Extremism'.
In the view of DGB Philosophy, both of these editorial viewpoints miss the Hegelian Dialectic Point. Specifically, neither Hegelian Classic Dialectic Theory nor DGB Post-Hegelian Dialectic Theory advocate or trumpet any form of 'philosophical and/or behavioral extremism'.
Now obviously, I can speak more for myself than for Hegel, and Hegel seemed to be very 'non-committal' and/or 'diplomatic' when it came to his political points of view. Correct me if I am wrong on this opinion -- any of you Hegelian scholars out there -- but from what I have read, it seemed like Hegel didn't want to 'upset the political apple cart'. There seemed to be a certain element of -- shall we say 'political lobbyism' (The American and Canadian people would know something about that) -- between Hegel who was being 'treated kindly by the 'Prussian Aristocrats' in exchange for Hegel calling the 'Prussian Goverment the best in evolutionary history'. Private, personal narcissism rears its ugly head again -- and undermines 'philosophical integrity' shall we say. Maybe I am not being fair to Hegel here. I will search for 'scholarly references' and perhaps come back to this point.
Similarily, if in my political essays, I have been fairly hard on the American Republic Party it is not because I don't have some strong 'Republcan Ideals' -- because I do; I just don't share any taste for the type of 'negative campaigning' that McCain and Palin have emphasized in their speeches and ads, believing that the closer we come to the actual voting, and the further McCain has fallen behind in the polls, the more he has gone to a 'right-wing extremist, almost Fascist-Nazi style, hate-division rheoric that I see no place for in any form of Republican Idealism that I advocate and/or trumpet.
Similarily, if Obama does become President and takes America even deeper and deeper into debt with increased spending, larger government, and no compensatory savings to get America out of the huge debt abyss that it is in, then I will start to come down hard on Obama as well. But we haven't got there yet.
That is why I view myself as a 'Republican-Democratic, Conservative-Liberal, Integrative Idealist-Realist'. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. We haven't got there yet. Back to epistemology...and the influence of 'General Semantics' on DGB Epistemology.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Alfred Korzybski
Alfred Korzybski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)
Alfred Korzybski
Born July 3, 1879(1879-07-03)
Warsaw, Congress Poland
Died March 1, 1950 (aged 70)
Lakeville, Connecticut, USA
Occupation Engineer, philosopher, mathematician
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (pronounced /kɔ'ʐɨpski/) (July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950) was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is most remembered for developing the theory of general semantics.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and career
2 General semantics
3 Korzybski and to be
4 Anecdote about Korzybski
5 Criticisms
6 Impact
7 See also
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links
[edit] Early life and career
Alfred Korzybski's family coat-of-arms (Habdank).He was born in Warsaw, Congress Poland. He came from an aristocratic family whose members had worked as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers for generations. He learned Polish at home and Russian in the schools; and having a French governess and a German governess, he became fluent in four languages as a child. As an adult, he chose to train as an engineer.
Korzybski was educated at the Warsaw University of Technology. During the First World War Korzybski served as an intelligence officer in the Russian Army. After being wounded in his leg and suffering other injuries, he came to North America in 1916 (first to Canada, then the United States) to coordinate the shipment of artillery to the war front. He also lectured to Polish-American audiences about the conflict, promoting the sale of war bonds. Following the war, he decided to remain in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1940. His first book, Manhood of Humanity, was published in 1921. In the book, he proposed and explained in detail a new theory of humankind: mankind as a time-binding class of life.
[edit] General semantics
Korzybski's work culminated in the founding of a discipline that he called general semantics (GS). As Korzybski explicitly said, GS should not be confused with semantics, a different subject. The basic principles of general semantics, which include time-binding, are outlined in Science and Sanity, published in 1933. In 1938 Korzybski founded the Institute of General Semantics and directed it until his death in Lakeville, Connecticut, USA.
Korzybski's work held a view that human beings are limited in what they know by (1) the structure of their nervous systems, and (2) the structure of their languages. Human beings cannot experience the world directly, but only through their "abstractions" (nonverbal impressions or "gleanings" derived from the nervous system, and verbal indicators expressed and derived from language). Sometimes our perceptions and our languages actually mislead us as to the "facts" with which we must deal. Our understanding of what is going on sometimes lacks similarity of structure with what is actually going on. He stressed training in awareness of abstracting, using techniques that he had derived from his study of mathematics and science. He called this awareness, this goal of his system, "consciousness of abstracting." His system included modifying the way we approach the world, e.g., with an attitude of "I don't know; let's see," to better discover or reflect its realities as shown by modern science. One of these techniques involved becoming inwardly and outwardly quiet, an experience that he called, "silence on the objective levels."
[edit] Korzybski and to be
Many supporters and critics of Korzybski reduced his rather complex system to a simple matter of what he said about the verb 'to be.' His system, however, is based primarily on such terminology as the different 'orders of abstraction,' and formulations such as 'consciousness of abstracting.' It is often said that Korzybski opposed the use of the verb "to be," an unfortunate exaggeration (see 'Criticisms' below). He thought that certain uses of the verb "to be," called the "is of identity" and the "is of predication," were faulty in structure, e.g., a statement such as, "Joe is a fool" (said of a person named 'Joe' who has done something that we regard as foolish). In Korzybski's system, one's assessment of Joe belongs to a higher order of abstraction than Joe himself. Korzybski's remedy was to deny identity; in this example, to be continually aware that 'Joe' is not what we call him. We find Joe not in the verbal domain, the world of words, but the nonverbal domain (the two, he said, amount to different orders of abstraction). This was expressed in Korzybski's most famous premise, "the map is not the territory." Note that this premise uses the phrase "is not", a form of "to be"; this and many other examples show that he did not intend to abandon "to be" as such. In fact, he expressly said that there were no structural problems with the verb "to be" when used as an auxiliary verb or when used to state existence or location. It was even 'OK' sometimes to use the faulty forms of the verb 'to be,' as long as one was aware of their structural limitations. This was developed into E-prime by one of his students 15 years after his death.
[edit] Anecdote about Korzybski
One day, Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students, and he suddenly interrupted the lesson in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row, if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit. "Nice biscuit, don't you think", said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously. Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies". The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to throw up, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet. "You see, ladies and gentlemen", Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter." Apparently his prank aimed to illustrate how some human suffering originates from the confusion or conflation of linguistic representations of reality and reality itself.[1]
[edit] Criticisms
See the criticism section of the main General Semantics article.
[edit] Impact
Korzybski's work influenced Gestalt Therapy[citation needed], Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy[2], and Neuro-linguistic programming[3] (especially the Meta model and ideas behind human modeling for performance). As reported in the Third Edition of Science and Sanity, The U.S. Army in World War II used his system to treat battle fatigue in Europe under the supervision of Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, who also became the psychiatrist in charge of the Nazi prisoners at Nuremberg. Other individuals influenced by Korzybski include Kenneth Burke, William S. Burroughs, Frank Herbert, Albert Ellis, Gregory Bateson, John Grinder, Buckminster Fuller, Douglas Engelbart, Stuart Chase, Alvin Toffler, Robert A. Heinlein (Korzybski is mentioned in the 1949 novella Gulf), L. Ron Hubbard, A. E. van Vogt, Robert Anton Wilson, entertainer Steve Allen, and Tommy Hall (lyricist for the 13th Floor Elevators); and scientists such as William Alanson White (psychiatry), physicist P. W. Bridgman, and researcher W. Horsley Gantt (a former student and colleague of Pavlov). He also influenced the Belgian surrealist writer of comics Jan Bucquoy in the seventh part of the comics series Jaunes: Labyrinthe, with explicit reference in the plot to Korzybski's "the map is not the territory."
In part the General Semantics tradition was upheld by Samuel I. Hayakawa, who did have a falling out with Korzybski. When asked over what, Hayakawa is said to have replied: "Words".
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Alfred Korzybski
[edit] See also
General Semantics
The map is not the territory
Structural differential
E-Prime
Institute of General Semantics
Robert Pula
Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
Science and Sanity Complete work online.
[edit] References
^ R. Diekstra, Haarlemmer Dagblad, 1993, cited by L. Derks & J. Hollander, Essenties van NLP (Utrecht: Servire, 1996), p. 58.
^ http://time-binding.org/misc/akml/akmls/58-ellis.pdf
^ Bandler, Richard & John Grinder (1975). The Structure of Magic I: A Book About Language and Therapy. Palo Alto, CA: Science & Behavior Books.
[edit] Further reading
Manhood of Humanity, Alfred Korzybski, forward by Edward Kasner, notes by M. Kendig, Institute of General Semantics, 1950, hardcover, 2nd edition, 391 pages, ISBN 0-937298-00-X. (Copy of the first edition)
Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Preface by Robert P. Pula, Institute of General Semantics, 1994, hardcover, 5th edition, ISBN 0-937298-01-8, (full text online)
Alfred Korzybski: Collected Writings 1920-1950, Institute of General Semantics, 1990, hardcover, ISBN 0-685-40616-4
Montagu, M. F. A. (1953). Time-binding and the concept of culture. The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Sep., 1953), pp. 148-155.
Murray, E. (1950). In memoriam: Alfred H. Korzybski. Sociometry, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Feb., 1950), pp. 76-77.
[edit] External links
Institute of General Semantics
Alfred Korzybski and Gestalt Therapy Website
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski"
Categories: 1879 births | 1950 deaths | General semantics | Naturalized citizens of the United States | Neuro-Linguistic Programming predecessors | Americans of Polish descent | Polish engineers | Polish philosophers | Polish mathematicians | Polish linguists
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)
Alfred Korzybski
Born July 3, 1879(1879-07-03)
Warsaw, Congress Poland
Died March 1, 1950 (aged 70)
Lakeville, Connecticut, USA
Occupation Engineer, philosopher, mathematician
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (pronounced /kɔ'ʐɨpski/) (July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950) was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is most remembered for developing the theory of general semantics.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life and career
2 General semantics
3 Korzybski and to be
4 Anecdote about Korzybski
5 Criticisms
6 Impact
7 See also
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links
[edit] Early life and career
Alfred Korzybski's family coat-of-arms (Habdank).He was born in Warsaw, Congress Poland. He came from an aristocratic family whose members had worked as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers for generations. He learned Polish at home and Russian in the schools; and having a French governess and a German governess, he became fluent in four languages as a child. As an adult, he chose to train as an engineer.
Korzybski was educated at the Warsaw University of Technology. During the First World War Korzybski served as an intelligence officer in the Russian Army. After being wounded in his leg and suffering other injuries, he came to North America in 1916 (first to Canada, then the United States) to coordinate the shipment of artillery to the war front. He also lectured to Polish-American audiences about the conflict, promoting the sale of war bonds. Following the war, he decided to remain in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1940. His first book, Manhood of Humanity, was published in 1921. In the book, he proposed and explained in detail a new theory of humankind: mankind as a time-binding class of life.
[edit] General semantics
Korzybski's work culminated in the founding of a discipline that he called general semantics (GS). As Korzybski explicitly said, GS should not be confused with semantics, a different subject. The basic principles of general semantics, which include time-binding, are outlined in Science and Sanity, published in 1933. In 1938 Korzybski founded the Institute of General Semantics and directed it until his death in Lakeville, Connecticut, USA.
Korzybski's work held a view that human beings are limited in what they know by (1) the structure of their nervous systems, and (2) the structure of their languages. Human beings cannot experience the world directly, but only through their "abstractions" (nonverbal impressions or "gleanings" derived from the nervous system, and verbal indicators expressed and derived from language). Sometimes our perceptions and our languages actually mislead us as to the "facts" with which we must deal. Our understanding of what is going on sometimes lacks similarity of structure with what is actually going on. He stressed training in awareness of abstracting, using techniques that he had derived from his study of mathematics and science. He called this awareness, this goal of his system, "consciousness of abstracting." His system included modifying the way we approach the world, e.g., with an attitude of "I don't know; let's see," to better discover or reflect its realities as shown by modern science. One of these techniques involved becoming inwardly and outwardly quiet, an experience that he called, "silence on the objective levels."
[edit] Korzybski and to be
Many supporters and critics of Korzybski reduced his rather complex system to a simple matter of what he said about the verb 'to be.' His system, however, is based primarily on such terminology as the different 'orders of abstraction,' and formulations such as 'consciousness of abstracting.' It is often said that Korzybski opposed the use of the verb "to be," an unfortunate exaggeration (see 'Criticisms' below). He thought that certain uses of the verb "to be," called the "is of identity" and the "is of predication," were faulty in structure, e.g., a statement such as, "Joe is a fool" (said of a person named 'Joe' who has done something that we regard as foolish). In Korzybski's system, one's assessment of Joe belongs to a higher order of abstraction than Joe himself. Korzybski's remedy was to deny identity; in this example, to be continually aware that 'Joe' is not what we call him. We find Joe not in the verbal domain, the world of words, but the nonverbal domain (the two, he said, amount to different orders of abstraction). This was expressed in Korzybski's most famous premise, "the map is not the territory." Note that this premise uses the phrase "is not", a form of "to be"; this and many other examples show that he did not intend to abandon "to be" as such. In fact, he expressly said that there were no structural problems with the verb "to be" when used as an auxiliary verb or when used to state existence or location. It was even 'OK' sometimes to use the faulty forms of the verb 'to be,' as long as one was aware of their structural limitations. This was developed into E-prime by one of his students 15 years after his death.
[edit] Anecdote about Korzybski
One day, Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students, and he suddenly interrupted the lesson in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row, if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit. "Nice biscuit, don't you think", said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously. Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies". The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to throw up, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet. "You see, ladies and gentlemen", Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter." Apparently his prank aimed to illustrate how some human suffering originates from the confusion or conflation of linguistic representations of reality and reality itself.[1]
[edit] Criticisms
See the criticism section of the main General Semantics article.
[edit] Impact
Korzybski's work influenced Gestalt Therapy[citation needed], Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy[2], and Neuro-linguistic programming[3] (especially the Meta model and ideas behind human modeling for performance). As reported in the Third Edition of Science and Sanity, The U.S. Army in World War II used his system to treat battle fatigue in Europe under the supervision of Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, who also became the psychiatrist in charge of the Nazi prisoners at Nuremberg. Other individuals influenced by Korzybski include Kenneth Burke, William S. Burroughs, Frank Herbert, Albert Ellis, Gregory Bateson, John Grinder, Buckminster Fuller, Douglas Engelbart, Stuart Chase, Alvin Toffler, Robert A. Heinlein (Korzybski is mentioned in the 1949 novella Gulf), L. Ron Hubbard, A. E. van Vogt, Robert Anton Wilson, entertainer Steve Allen, and Tommy Hall (lyricist for the 13th Floor Elevators); and scientists such as William Alanson White (psychiatry), physicist P. W. Bridgman, and researcher W. Horsley Gantt (a former student and colleague of Pavlov). He also influenced the Belgian surrealist writer of comics Jan Bucquoy in the seventh part of the comics series Jaunes: Labyrinthe, with explicit reference in the plot to Korzybski's "the map is not the territory."
In part the General Semantics tradition was upheld by Samuel I. Hayakawa, who did have a falling out with Korzybski. When asked over what, Hayakawa is said to have replied: "Words".
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Alfred Korzybski
[edit] See also
General Semantics
The map is not the territory
Structural differential
E-Prime
Institute of General Semantics
Robert Pula
Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
Science and Sanity Complete work online.
[edit] References
^ R. Diekstra, Haarlemmer Dagblad, 1993, cited by L. Derks & J. Hollander, Essenties van NLP (Utrecht: Servire, 1996), p. 58.
^ http://time-binding.org/misc/akml/akmls/58-ellis.pdf
^ Bandler, Richard & John Grinder (1975). The Structure of Magic I: A Book About Language and Therapy. Palo Alto, CA: Science & Behavior Books.
[edit] Further reading
Manhood of Humanity, Alfred Korzybski, forward by Edward Kasner, notes by M. Kendig, Institute of General Semantics, 1950, hardcover, 2nd edition, 391 pages, ISBN 0-937298-00-X. (Copy of the first edition)
Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Preface by Robert P. Pula, Institute of General Semantics, 1994, hardcover, 5th edition, ISBN 0-937298-01-8, (full text online)
Alfred Korzybski: Collected Writings 1920-1950, Institute of General Semantics, 1990, hardcover, ISBN 0-685-40616-4
Montagu, M. F. A. (1953). Time-binding and the concept of culture. The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Sep., 1953), pp. 148-155.
Murray, E. (1950). In memoriam: Alfred H. Korzybski. Sociometry, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Feb., 1950), pp. 76-77.
[edit] External links
Institute of General Semantics
Alfred Korzybski and Gestalt Therapy Website
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski"
Categories: 1879 births | 1950 deaths | General semantics | Naturalized citizens of the United States | Neuro-Linguistic Programming predecessors | Americans of Polish descent | Polish engineers | Polish philosophers | Polish mathematicians | Polish linguists
A Brief Synopsis Of The Life and Works of General Semanticist, S.I. Hayakawa
S. I. Hayakawa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
S. I. Hayakawa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
United States Senator
from California
In office
January 2, 1977 – January 3, 1983
Preceded by John V. Tunney
Succeeded by Pete Wilson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Born July 18, 1906
Vancouver, British Columbia
Died February 27, 1992 (aged 85)
Greenbrae, California
Political party Republican
Profession English professor
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and political figure. He was an English professor, served as president of San Francisco State University and then a United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he was educated in the public schools of Calgary, Alberta and Winnipeg, Manitoba; received his undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1927; graduate degrees in English from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1928, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1935.
Contents [hide]
1 Academic career
1.1 Student strike at San Francisco State University
2 Political career
3 References
[edit] Academic career
Professionally, Hayakawa was a psychologist, semanticist, teacher and writer. He was an instructor at the University of Wisconsin from 1936 to 1939 and at the Armour Institute of Technology from 1939 to 1947. Hayakawa was an important semanticist. His first book on the subject, Language in Thought and Action, was published in 1949 as an expansion of the earlier work, Language in Action, written since 1938 and published in 1941 to be a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. It is currently in its fifth edition and has greatly helped popularize Alfred Korzybski's general semantics and in effect semantics in general, while semantics or theory of meaning was overwhelmed by mysticism, propagandism and even scientism. In the Preface, he said:
"The original version of this book, Language in Action, published in 1941, was in many respects a response to the dangers of propaganda, especially as exemplified in Adolf Hitler's success in persuading millions to share his maniacal and destructive views. It was the writer's conviction then, as it remains now, that everyone needs to have a habitually critical attitude towards language — his own as well as that of others — both for the sake of his personal well-being and for his adequate functioning as a citizen. Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow-citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue."
In addition to such motivation, he acknowledged his debt as follows:
"My deepest debt in this book is to the General Semantics ('non-Aristotelian system') of Alfred Korzybski. I have also drawn heavily upon the works of other contributors to semantic thought: especially C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, Thorstein Veblen, Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, Karl R. Popper, Thurman Arnold, Jerome Frank, Jean Piaget, Charles Morris, Wendell Johnson, Irving J. Lee, Ernst Cassirer, Anatol Rapoport, Stuart Chase. I am also deeply indebted to the writings of numerous psychologists and psychiatrists with one or another of the dynamic points of view inspired by Sigmund Freud: Karl Menninger, Trigant Burrow, Carl Rogers, Kurt Lewin, N. R. F. Maier, Jurgen Ruesch, Gregory Bateson, Rudolf Dreikurs, Milton Rokeach. I have also found extremely helpful the writings of cultural anthropologists, especially those of Benjamin Lee Whorf, Ruth Benedict, Clyde Kluckhohn, Leslie A. White, Margaret Mead, Weston La Barre."
He was a lecturer at the University of Chicago from 1950 to 1955. During this time he presented a talk at the 1954 Conference of Activity Vector Analysts at Lake George, New York in which he discussed a theory of personality from the semantic point of view. This was later published as The Semantic Barrier. This was a definitive lecture as it discussed the Darwinism of the "survival of self" as contrasted with the "survival of self-concept".
He became an English professor at San Francisco State College (now called San Francisco State University) from 1955 to 1968. In the early 1960s, he helped organize the Anti Digit Dialing League, a group in San Francisco that opposed the introduction of all digit telephone exchange names. Among the students he trained were commune leader Stephen Gaskin and author Gerald Haslam. He became president of San Francisco State College during the turbulent period of 1968 to 1973, becoming president emeritus in 1973 and then wrote a column for the Register & Tribune Syndicate from 1970 to 1976.
[edit] Student strike at San Francisco State University
During 1968-69, there was a bitter student strike at San Francisco State University that was a major news event at the time and chapter in the radical history of the United States and the Bay Area. The strike was led by the Third World Liberation Front supported by Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers and the counter-cultural community, among others. It demanded an end to racism, creation of a Black Studies Department and an end to the War in Vietnam and the university's complicity with it. Hayakawa became popular with mainstream voters in this period after he pulled the wires out from the speakers on a student van at an outdoor rally, dramatically disrupting it. [1] , [2] , [3]
[edit] Political career
1977, Congressional Pictorial DirectoryHe was elected in California as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1976, defeating incumbent Democrat John V. Tunney. Hayakawa served from January 3, 1977 to January 3, 1983. He did not stand for reelection in 1982 and was succeeded by Republican Pete Wilson.
Hayakawa founded the political lobbying organization U.S. English, which is dedicated to making the English language the official language of the United States.
The Senator was a resident of Mill Valley, California until his death in Greenbrae, California, in 1992. He was also a member of the Bohemian Club, the first member of the club of Japanese ancestry. He also had an abiding interest in traditional jazz and wrote extensively on that subject, including several erudite sets of album liner notes. Sometimes in his lectures on semantics, he was joined by the respected traditional jazz pianist, Don Ewell, whom Hayakawa employed to demonstrate various points in which he analyzed semantic and musical principles.
[edit] References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
S. I. HayakawaS. I. Hayakawa at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Fox, R. F. (1991). A conversation with the Hayakawas. The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Feb., 1991), pp. 36-40.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
S. I. Hayakawa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
United States Senator
from California
In office
January 2, 1977 – January 3, 1983
Preceded by John V. Tunney
Succeeded by Pete Wilson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Born July 18, 1906
Vancouver, British Columbia
Died February 27, 1992 (aged 85)
Greenbrae, California
Political party Republican
Profession English professor
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and political figure. He was an English professor, served as president of San Francisco State University and then a United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he was educated in the public schools of Calgary, Alberta and Winnipeg, Manitoba; received his undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1927; graduate degrees in English from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1928, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1935.
Contents [hide]
1 Academic career
1.1 Student strike at San Francisco State University
2 Political career
3 References
[edit] Academic career
Professionally, Hayakawa was a psychologist, semanticist, teacher and writer. He was an instructor at the University of Wisconsin from 1936 to 1939 and at the Armour Institute of Technology from 1939 to 1947. Hayakawa was an important semanticist. His first book on the subject, Language in Thought and Action, was published in 1949 as an expansion of the earlier work, Language in Action, written since 1938 and published in 1941 to be a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. It is currently in its fifth edition and has greatly helped popularize Alfred Korzybski's general semantics and in effect semantics in general, while semantics or theory of meaning was overwhelmed by mysticism, propagandism and even scientism. In the Preface, he said:
"The original version of this book, Language in Action, published in 1941, was in many respects a response to the dangers of propaganda, especially as exemplified in Adolf Hitler's success in persuading millions to share his maniacal and destructive views. It was the writer's conviction then, as it remains now, that everyone needs to have a habitually critical attitude towards language — his own as well as that of others — both for the sake of his personal well-being and for his adequate functioning as a citizen. Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow-citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue."
In addition to such motivation, he acknowledged his debt as follows:
"My deepest debt in this book is to the General Semantics ('non-Aristotelian system') of Alfred Korzybski. I have also drawn heavily upon the works of other contributors to semantic thought: especially C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, Thorstein Veblen, Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, Karl R. Popper, Thurman Arnold, Jerome Frank, Jean Piaget, Charles Morris, Wendell Johnson, Irving J. Lee, Ernst Cassirer, Anatol Rapoport, Stuart Chase. I am also deeply indebted to the writings of numerous psychologists and psychiatrists with one or another of the dynamic points of view inspired by Sigmund Freud: Karl Menninger, Trigant Burrow, Carl Rogers, Kurt Lewin, N. R. F. Maier, Jurgen Ruesch, Gregory Bateson, Rudolf Dreikurs, Milton Rokeach. I have also found extremely helpful the writings of cultural anthropologists, especially those of Benjamin Lee Whorf, Ruth Benedict, Clyde Kluckhohn, Leslie A. White, Margaret Mead, Weston La Barre."
He was a lecturer at the University of Chicago from 1950 to 1955. During this time he presented a talk at the 1954 Conference of Activity Vector Analysts at Lake George, New York in which he discussed a theory of personality from the semantic point of view. This was later published as The Semantic Barrier. This was a definitive lecture as it discussed the Darwinism of the "survival of self" as contrasted with the "survival of self-concept".
He became an English professor at San Francisco State College (now called San Francisco State University) from 1955 to 1968. In the early 1960s, he helped organize the Anti Digit Dialing League, a group in San Francisco that opposed the introduction of all digit telephone exchange names. Among the students he trained were commune leader Stephen Gaskin and author Gerald Haslam. He became president of San Francisco State College during the turbulent period of 1968 to 1973, becoming president emeritus in 1973 and then wrote a column for the Register & Tribune Syndicate from 1970 to 1976.
[edit] Student strike at San Francisco State University
During 1968-69, there was a bitter student strike at San Francisco State University that was a major news event at the time and chapter in the radical history of the United States and the Bay Area. The strike was led by the Third World Liberation Front supported by Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers and the counter-cultural community, among others. It demanded an end to racism, creation of a Black Studies Department and an end to the War in Vietnam and the university's complicity with it. Hayakawa became popular with mainstream voters in this period after he pulled the wires out from the speakers on a student van at an outdoor rally, dramatically disrupting it. [1] , [2] , [3]
[edit] Political career
1977, Congressional Pictorial DirectoryHe was elected in California as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1976, defeating incumbent Democrat John V. Tunney. Hayakawa served from January 3, 1977 to January 3, 1983. He did not stand for reelection in 1982 and was succeeded by Republican Pete Wilson.
Hayakawa founded the political lobbying organization U.S. English, which is dedicated to making the English language the official language of the United States.
The Senator was a resident of Mill Valley, California until his death in Greenbrae, California, in 1992. He was also a member of the Bohemian Club, the first member of the club of Japanese ancestry. He also had an abiding interest in traditional jazz and wrote extensively on that subject, including several erudite sets of album liner notes. Sometimes in his lectures on semantics, he was joined by the respected traditional jazz pianist, Don Ewell, whom Hayakawa employed to demonstrate various points in which he analyzed semantic and musical principles.
[edit] References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
S. I. HayakawaS. I. Hayakawa at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Fox, R. F. (1991). A conversation with the Hayakawas. The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Feb., 1991), pp. 36-40.
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