66 years ago, before ETC: Volume 1, Number 1.

PLANS FOR A GENERAL SEMANTICS SOCIETY were moving forward by January of 1942. Also envisioned was a general semantics journal. Alfred Korzybski asked Gordon McKnight to be editor, expecting him to produce at least a prospectus to be distributed at the founding meeting of a society for general semantics. Gordon McKnight and I were friends from our University of Chicago days. He knew that I had some editorial experience; so he asked me to plan the page make-ups, which I did. "What shall we call it?" That now became an insistent question. We held a meeting in my apartment in order to decide upon a name for the publication. Also invited for this name search was Tom Blakely, another of Gordon's friends.

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Well into that evening, after many suggested names had been discussed, discussed, and discarded, Tom Blakely said, "Why not call it Etcetera?"

Gordon, feeling it was time for some decision, indicated that we might as well settle for that. I felt a more "creative" name could still come forth; so our searchings resumed.

After some twenty minutes of further introspection and dialogue, nothing more satisfactory had suggested itself; nor could I come up with a more exciting name. At last we had struggled to a consensus.

This general semantics periodical-to-be was named etc (small letters, no period, in its debut) and presented on Friday, April 24, 1942, in Chicago, at the founding dinner of the International Society for General Semantics.

65 Years Ago, ETC: Volume 1, Number 1

E. E. CUMMINGS, ETCETERA

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
        cetera, of

Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

Communication from Korzybski

Dear Hayakawa:

We at the Institute are very happy that you have been selected as the editor of ETC. We hear that some of the readers like the title ETC. and that a few do not. Personally I feel that the publication of the Society could not have a better title. After all, our work is based on a non-aristotelian orientation, in which a supposedly 'innocent' change in punctuation occurs. Thus, in an aristotelian two-valued orientation we habitually had a 'period and stop' attitude, as if what was said covered 'all' the characteristics of what we were talking about. In a non-aristotelian infinite-valued orientation we do not assume that whatever we may say covers 'all' the characteristics of a situation, and so we remain conscious of a permanent 'etcetera' instead of having the dogmatic 'period and stop' attitude. This turns out to be a key problem in general semantics and is much more serious than a mere grammatical device: it involves a whole reorientation fundamental in our extensional work. For these serious and complex considerations of rigidity versus flexibility, please disregard the critics of the title ETC., as it turns out to be a most appropriate title.

Yours cordially,

ALFRED KORZYBSKI

BERNARD CHALIP, How ET CETERA WAS NAMED

FROM THE ARCHIVES EDITOR: NORA MILLER

* From Collected Poems, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company. Copyright, 1923, 1935, 1931, 1938, by E. E. Cummings. Copyright, 1926, by Boni and Liveright.