Dates and indexes.

FROM BUENOS AIRES comes this news regarding Trustee Laura Bertone's book The Hidden Side of Babel: "First, thanks to Bruce Kodish, who gave my e-mail address to a lady called Susan White who sent me a very nice mail saying she would like to buy a copy! This will be one of the first copies sold here, since we are planning to launch it only in April. Then, the director of the MBA [program] in translation at the School of Law, University of Buenos Aires, wants to co-organize a round-table on the book in April. And in July, I will also be speaking at a Conference on Translation and Interpretation to be held here. Then, I met with an old colleague from Washington and she ordered several copies. She told me she used my previous book in Spanish on the same subject for some of her classes at the State Department and seems interested in this new version in English." Look for a review of Laura's book in the 2006 General Semantics Bulletin, due out in March (as of this writing.)

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IGS Member and ETC contributor, David Linwood, writes to say that his book, Hannah and Miriam, has been listed by Amazon. Linwood uses the book's fictional title heroines to present a historic look at life in the region of Judaea during the time of Caesar Augustus.

The January 2007 ETC feature, Dates and Indexes (page 97), contained this note: "October's meeting [of the San Francisco Society of General Semantics] featured a short discussion by Jeremy Klein on how Lakoff's framing and metaphorical notions had penetrated into areas where the cognitive ambitions of general semantics (summarized as 'producing consciousness of abstracting') have yet to reach." Jeremy offers these additional thoughts:

"Cognitive scientists with a linguistic orientation have achieved an influence in areas of public discourse that proponents of general semantics could benefit from studying. Note, for example, George Lakoff's influence as a political consultant in the last presidential election. The cognitive approach has much to offer general semantics. Potentially, general semantics could offer much to cognitive science as a critical, prescriptive cognitive-based discipline."

Readers might find the following excerpt from Philosophy in the Flesh by Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. Jeremy recommends the book to anyone interested in how today's neuroscience addresses questions of how we think and understand and interpret our world.

Consider, for example, all that is going on below the level of conscious awareness when you are in a conversation. Here is only a small part of what you are doing, second by second:

* Accessing memories relevant to what is being said

* Comprehending a stream of sound as being language, dividing it into distinctive phonetic features and segments, identifying phonemes, and grouping them into morphemes

* Assigning a structure to the sentence in accord with the vast number of grammatical constructions in your native language

* Picking out words and giving them meanings appropriate to context

* Making semantic and pragmatic sense of the sentences as a whole

* Framing what is said in terms relevant to the discussion

* Performing inferences relevant to what is being discussed

* Constructing mental images where relevant and inspecting them

* Filling in gaps in the discourse

* Noticing and interpreting your interlocutor's body language

* Anticipating where the conversation is going

* Planning what to say in response

Cognitive scientists have shown experimentally that to understand even the simplest utterance, we must perform these and other incredibly complex forms of thought automatically and without noticeable effort below the level of consciousness. It is not merely that we occasionally do not notice these processes; rather, they are inaccessible to conscious awareness and control. (Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, G. Lakoff, M. Johnson. Basic Books: New York, 1999. pp.10-11)

From Great Britain comes this letter from Tim Johnson, a graduate philosophy student at the London School of Economics, and previously at Oxford University:

  I am planning to write my doctoral thesis on Korzybski's ideas. From
  my experience of British academia, it seems that General Semantics has
  been greatly neglected here (S & S is not even in the LSE library
  catalogue!), and my hope in writing this thesis is partly to stir
  interest in a field that I think still has a lot to add to modern
  philosophy.

  I am still in the process of finalising my thesis title, but my
  current thinking is to show how AK's system can shed new light on some
  philosophical issues that mainstream academic philosophy has failed to
  solve. For example: 1) applying the map/territory distinction,
  structural differential, etc. to resolve Putnam's famous Twin Earth
  paradox; 2) refuting Donald Davidson's arguments against linguistic
  relativism and the possibility of multiple conceptual schemes.

  To my knowledge, neither of these topics has been directly addressed
  through a GS lens, but I was hoping you might know of any relevant
  literature or thinking that might help. Or if there is anyone
  associated with the institute who you think might be interested in
  discussing these topics I would really appreciate an introduction.

  Many thanks, and keep flying the flag for GS!

If you have information for Tim or an interest in assisting with his research, please contact the IGS office, via email at [e-mail], or by phone at 817-922-9950.

We note the passing of two well-known and perhaps controversial names in general semantics: mathematician and educator Anatole Rapoport died in Toronto on January 20. Rapoport served as a director of the International Society of General Semantics for several years in the 50s, and sat on the editorial board of ETC as well. He wrote many articles and conducted lively correspondence with readers during that time. Rapoport is survived by his wife Gwen, children Anya, Alexander and Anthony, and grandchildren, Leo and Erin. A scholarship fund has been established in his name at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto.

And writer Robert Anton Wilson died January 11 in California. In his many books, Wilson promoted the central ideas of general semantics, mixed with what he saw as related concepts from a wide and eclectic selection of philosophies. Wilson wrote articles and books on the benefits of using E-Prime and gave the 46th annual AKML in 1997. See excerpts on page 51.