ETC (volume I, number 1) revisited.

THE FIRST ISSUE of any publication interests us for a variety of reasons. It allows us a glimpse of the focus and direction of its originators, it sets the tone for ensuing issues, and if the publication survives for a while, it provides a time-binding link for the current generation of readers. With these thoughts in mind, I decided to look at the first issue of ETC (now in its sixty-first year of continuous publication).

ETC, vol. I, no. 1, was published in August 1943. It contains seven articles, one poem, two book reviews and a "News and Miscellany" section. I was particularly impressed by the variety of subjects covered (philosophy, art, poetry, English composition, psychology, chemistry, anthropology, etc.), the famous contributors (Margaret Mead, e. e. cummings, and Edward L. Thorndike), and the overall high quality of the writing. Four of the articles were previously published elsewhere and three were original submissions. Some were relatively easy to read and some required a rereading for better understanding. I learned something from each of them (as I do from the articles in each new ETC) and I gained a renewed appreciation for those whose efforts caused ETC to be born.

This article provides an introduction to each segment of the first ETC. I have included direct quotations to enable the reader to get a flavor for each writer's ideas and style. Perhaps the piece may motivate some to seek out other past issues of ETC for increased wisdom and enjoyment of general semantics. For GS "old-timers," perhaps my discussion of ETC, vol. I, no. 1, will revive fond memories.

Let's begin with a letter from Alfred Korzybski to S.I. Hayakawa, the first editor of ETC. It appears on page 62 in the "News and Miscellany" section.

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 'et cetera'
  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

The Articles

I. "Science and Values" (pages 1-11) by Edward L. Thorndike

Edward L. Thorndike was a major figure in several fields of psychology: learning theory, applied psychology, and mental measurement. Thorndike rid his theories of the mentalism of earlier psychologists and paved the way for the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner and John B. Watson. He published approximately 500 books and articles.

"Science and Values" was the first article in ETC and it contains a short introduction by Korzybski. Professor Thorndike originally delivered this paper in 1935, on the occasion of his retirement from the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The paper is a call for scientists and the scientific method to become more involved in formulating and analyzing not only "what is going on" but "what ought to be going on."

Korzybski's introduction to "Science and Values"
  The following paper ... is perhaps the best that could have been
  selected as an introduction to ETC ... From the point of view of
  general semantics there is very little, if anything, I can add or
  reformulate, besides endorsing practically sentence after sentence as
  they stand. Here we find outlined, in fact, the very problems we have
  been dealing with in practice through the formulation and application
  of a non-aristotelian system for many years.
    Professor Thorndike rightly asks that scientific methods should be
  applied to human evaluations.... The understanding that something
  desirable should happen is not enough; we have to have workable
  methods and techniques to bring about the desired results.

From "Science and Values"
  ... science has been rather willing to leave values alone. So
  psychologists rarely study the causes of happiness, economists recoil
  from all wants save those expressed in money prices, students of
  education deal with the consequences of school work upon abilities,
  but not, save rarely, upon desires and satisfactions. So we all have
  left and still tend to leave decisions about consequences to humanists
  --to philosophers, sages, men of affairs, historians and literary men.
    Some of the humanists would gladly accept the responsibility, being
  confident that science should leave such decisions to them. They
  distrust the activities of the social sciences and especially their
  entry into the field of human values. It is better, such a humanist
  will assert, to listen to the seers and sages and to follow the dreams
  of inspired artists and moralists than to poke about in the schools,
  streets, market-places, prisons and asylums, or collect statistics, or
  drag human aspirations into the laboratory.
    We may reasonably think it is better to do both. We should admit
  that Thucidydes reports a better description of liberty than the
  average Ph.D. candidate in political science to-day would give. If we
  had to choose between reading Sophocles and Euripides and reading the
  most scientific family budgets, we would reject the science. We would
  have science gladly learn and gladly teach what able men have thought
  about the consequences of various forms of conduct, but we would also
  have it test and experiment, regarding nothing outside the scope of
  science.
    Much of the scorn of certain humanists for the efforts of modern
  science seems to be due to the fact that the observations and
  experiments of scientific workers make dull reading. A cardinal virtue
  of these humanists is to be interesting; many of them are literary men
  to whom success in entertaining cultivated persons is a duty, as well
  as a source of pleasure and pride. It is partly because of this that
  we can not trust the humanist alone.

II. "General Semantics and Modern Art" (pages 12-23) by Oliver Bloodstein

This article was written in 1942 when the author attended Wendell Johnson's lectures in general semantics at the University of Iowa. Bloodstein included eight illustrations of paintings to further his point that modern art can be thought of as a non-aristotelian system that demands new semantic reactions. In a footnote he states that military duties prevented him from supplying detailed citations of his sources. Two readers, in the following issue of ETC, sent letters criticizing Bloodstein for what they considered a rather two dimensional view of art.

From "General Semantics and Modern Art"
  ... The purpose of this paper is to deal with modern art as a
  non-aristotelian system, contrasting its implied semantic reactions
  with the implied semantic reactions of the art which preceded it in
  Europe for several centuries. It is proposed to regard the traditional
  European art as an essentially aristotelian system involving
  identification, etc.
    Aristotle said, "Art is imitation of nature." Until about 1880 this
  dictum represented one of the chief aims of leading artists. The
  result of this attempt to be faithful to 'reality' was an increased
  emphasis upon objects, in and for themselves, in the belief that they
  represent 'nature.' Thus, European art became an art of content, or
  subject matter, dominated by an attitude of 'allness' resulting from
  the identification of the artist's particular level of abstraction
  with 'reality.'
    The artists who, in recent years, broke with this tradition,
  abolished the old semantic reactions involving identifications. The
  art they established, or rather reestablished, is based on
  non-aristotelian semantic reactions.
    Modern art is based on consciousness of abstracting.
    It considers structure, relations, order to be the only content of
  art.
    It rejects identity.
    It accepts the principle of non-elementalism.
    It is based on extensional methods.

III. "ETCETERA" by e. e. cummings (page 24)

E. e. cummings was a poet whose unique use of typography, punctuation, and vocabulary was influential in the development of modern poetry. Cummings, like Korzybski, was greatly influenced by his military experience during World War I. In 1922 he wrote The Enormous Room, a fictional prose work that portrays the cruel bureaucracy of war. His poem "ETCETERA," which was published in 1923, has a title and meaning that ought to resonate for general semanticists.

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)

IV. "You Can't Write Writing" (pages 25-32) by Wendell Johnson 

This is an original contribution by a seminal general semanticist best known for the groundbreaking text People in Quandaries (1946). On the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of ETC (1993) the editor wrote, "We acknowledge Wendell Johnson's major contributions to the overlapping fields of speech therapy, critical thinking, and general semantics. In an era when scientific endeavor has attracted more hostile analysis than the British Royal Family, we could benefit from the study of Johnson's writings."

"You Can't Write Writing," was republished in its entirety in the fiftieth anniversary issue of ETC. The writing style is typical Wendell Johnson--clear and to the point. He wants English teachers to teach effective communication skills--not give excuses that effective writing is an art that cannot be taught nor to merely teach grammar.

From "You Can't Write Writing"
  ... The teacher of English appears to attempt to place the emphasis
  upon writing, rather than upon writing-about-something-for-someone.
  From this it follows quite inevitably that the student of English
  fails in large measure to learn the nature or the significance of
  clarity or precision and of organization in the written representation
  of facts.
    He learns grammatical correctness reasonably well, because that is
  emphasized. But as long as the student's primary anxieties are made to
  revolve around the task of learning to spell, punctuate, and observe
  the rules of syntax, he is not likely to become keenly conscious of
  the fact that when he writes he is, above all, communicating. If he is
  to learn to communicate effectively, he must realize that his first
  obligation to his reader is not to be grammatically fashionable, but
  to be clear and coherent. One does not just communicate, one
  communicates something to someone. And the something communicated is
  not the words used in the communication, but whatever those words
  represent. Moreover, the degree to which there is communication
  depends precisely upon the degree to which the words represent the
  same thing for the receiver or reader that they do for the sender or
  writer. And the degree to which they do is an index of the clarity of
  the communication or written statement.

V. "General Semantics and Psychoanalysis: Korzybski and Freud" (pages 33-40) by Charles I. Glicksberg

Glicksberg points out, in this original article, Korzybski's belief that Freudian psychology needs to be revised in the light of new scientific knowledge and general semantics formulations. Such knowledge can help the patient balance the verbal world with the structural world. Psychoanalysis enjoyed a vogue in the nineteen forties. Margaret Mead's article "The Problem of Changing Food Habits," which appears later in this issue, also deals with psychoanalytic concerns.

From "General Semantics and Psychoanalysis"
  While no one as yet has ventured to undertake a psychoanalysis of
  general semantics, Korzybski practically furnishes a semantic analysis
  of Freudianism, its limitations and its strength, its contradictions
  and its positive contributions. He accepts the unconscious, but
  instead of devoting himself to the task of dredging the contents of
  the unconscious, he is interested in the structural unconscious that
  underlies our language, our philosophy, our myths, our values, our
  social order. Hence his concern is with both society and the
  individual, with both the unconscious and its relations to reality. He
  is not, however, satisfied with adjustments or social reality as we
  find it, which is what the psychoanalyst, on the whole, endeavors to
  do for his patient. Such an adjustment offers but temporary
  alleviation. It is necessary that all of present-day society be
  analyzed by semantic methods in order to discover the degree to which
  it is dominated by false values, by infantilism, regressive
  tendencies. The objective is to develop ultimately a technique of
  preventative semantic hygiene.

VI. "Chemical Semantics" (pages 41-46) by S. Weiner

This article originally appeared in the Journal of Chemical Education (1942). It was written in response to letters and articles to the journal that demanded the scientific examples of how "correct" defining may prove at best elusive.

From "Chemical Semantics"
  Admittedly, there is some value to efforts at improving word usage
  among our students or ourselves, but too often our efforts are wasted
  on trifles. A case in triviality is that of the physician who
  complained that 'clinic' is used to mean bedless institutions such as
  dispensaries and out-patient departments, whereas the Greek work kline
  means 'bed.' It is immaterial whether a titration be called a
  'volumetric' or a 'titrimetric' procedure, since the meaning of the
  former is clear to any graduate chemist; its replacement by the latter
  word may, however, be justified in a classification of analytical
  procedures, to prevent confusions of titrations with gas-analytical
  methods. It is inexact meaning, not inexact phrasing, that confuses.
  This is all the more so because the meaning is often tacit and
  implied.
    ... definitions are themselves composed of words and often these
  latter are themselves in need of clear definition. Sometimes a
  definition merely transfers the ambiguity from one word to several.
  Sometimes the ambiguity is concealed by the apparently simple words
  composing the definition. In the definitions of element, compound, and
  mixture we frequently meet the undefined terms 'pure', 'simple', and
  'decomposed.'

VII. "The Problem of Changing Food Habits: With Suggestions for Psychoanalytic Contributions" (pages 47-50) by Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead is best known for her famous dissertation, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). In that work she showed that, in contrast to modern Western society, adolescence in some societies is traditionally not an especially difficult time. Mead was an ardent publicist and popularizer of cultural anthropology. In this article, part of an address presented at the Topeka Psychoanalytic Society in 1942, the symbolic nature of American food habits are explored and suggestions are made for related psychoanalytic research.

From "The Problem of Changing Food Habits"
  ... When American food habits are compared with those of various
  European nations and with those of primitive peoples we find that
  eating in America is primarily a "super-ego" problem, that if you eat
  enough of the food that is not good but is good for you, you are then
  permitted to eat a little of the food that is good but is not good for
  you. This attitude is instilled into each generation by the use of
  reward and punishment and as a result the findings of the science of
  nutrition do not become an automatic part of our cultural tradition
  but remain a subject of moral choice for each individual. For example,
  men and children are supposed not to like vegetables. It is women's
  responsibility to see that the family eats vegetables, by coercing the
  children, cajoling the men, and by camouflaging the disliked
  vegetables in various ways. Sweets and desserts are used as rewards.
  American mothers do not see how one can teach children to eat without
  bribes, and they are amazed to learn that certain cultures do not use
  desserts.

VIII. "The Brotherhood of Doctrines" (pages 51-57) by Alfred Korzybski

This article originally appeared in "The Builder" in 1922. It praises the work of Cassius Keyser, especially Mathematical Philosophy, and underscores the importance of science and mathematics for improving the human condition. In a note at the beginning of the article, the editors of ETC mention that they hope to republish other early papers by Korzybski from time to time. (All the papers, chapters, transcripts and reviews that Korzybski published during his lifetime, other than his two major books, have been published in Alfred Korzybski: Collected Writings 1920-1950, collected and arranged by M. Kendig. Englewood, New Jersey: International Non-Aristotelian Library/Institute of General Semantics, 1990.)

From "The Brotherhood of Doctrines"
  In the space allotted for this writing only a very few of the most
  momentous points can be sketched, and I make no pretense to finality.
  The aim is to draw the attention of scientists, and thinkers, to the
  fact that something of grave importance for all our human future is
  going on; to encourage inquiry and collaboration, and thus to
  accelerate the inevitable.
    What I here call the inevitable is the coming of the empire of sound
  logic--a logic demanding scientific knowledge of human nature,
  adjusting human beliefs, institutions, doctrines, and conduct to the
  essential facts and laws of human nature, and converting the
  pseudo-sciences of ethics, economics and government into genuine
  sciences for promoting human welfare....
    There is, perhaps, nothing wrong with 'human nature', but there is
  something basically wrong with our old premises and logic. As a fact,
  every human activity has at its foundation some doctrine as an
  inherent, unconditionally inseparable part of the activity. Because of
  logical fate, the analysis of doctrine, which underlies all human
  activities, becomes the most important--nay the all-important--fact
  for all the future of man....
    A person of high standing, two years ago proclaimed the return to
  'normalcy.' This word proved prophetic: 'normalcy' appears to mean the
  return to waste, combat, strife, strikes, wars and revolutions. Is
  such a 'normalcy' normal to man? Is the static animal world of no
  change befitting the dynamic being, man?

The Book Reviews

IX. Book Review of The Nature of Literature: Its Relation to Science, Language and Human Experience, by Thomas Clark Pollock (pages 58, 59) reviewed by Sanford B. Meech

Sanford B. Meech was an English professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

From the book review of The Nature of Literature: Its Relation to
Science, Language and Human Experience
  Science ... is limited to the communication of those abstractions of
  human experience which are exactly verifiable. Of scientific
  statement, Professor Pollock writes:

    The attempt of men to communicate knowledge which can be exactly and
  certainly understood thus reduces itself, when successful, to the
  symbolization of publicly discriminable references. When most
  successful--that is, when most 'scientific'--such communication is
  limited to the statement of pointer readings and ideas logically
  derived therefrom. Pointer readings may be defined as publicly
  discriminable elements of experience, especially those elements which
  are the readings of pointers on measuring devices such as clocks,
  weighing machines, thermometers, and yardsticks.

X. Book Review of Mind, Medicine. and Man, by Gregory Zilboorg, M.D., (pages 60, 61) reviewed by S.I. Hayakawa

S.I. Hayakawa, a co-founder of ETC and its editor for more than a quarter of a century, was a major figure in the development of the journal. The fiftieth anniversary edition of ETC (Summer 1993) had this to say of him: "A student of Korzybski and an early exponent of his epistemological-cognitive formulations, Hayakawa thought it appropriate that a general semantics review should inquire into virtually all areas of human signific and symbolic activity. His special concern was the drama of human relations as mediated by ideology and such persuasive forces as propaganda, advertising, and popular entertainment."

Hayakawa contributed many articles and book reviews to ETC over the years. This first one was full of praise for the author's style and content.

From the book review of Mind, Medicine, and Man
  ... Every general reader should read his (Zilboorg's) account, early
  in the book, of what psychology is, and what misconceptions, both lay
  and professional, prevent intelligent discussion. 'Psychology,' he
  writes, 'deals with the total functions of the organism ...' The
  popular notion that a psychological reaction is something 'purely
  mental' is shown to be disastrously misleading in its implications.
    Furthermore, all lawyers should read his chapter on the legal
  Aspects of insanity. Dr. Zilboorg shows that, as the rules are now
  arranged, it is impossible for a psychiatrist to take the stand in a
  court of law and do justice to himself or his science. The setup is
  entirely wrong, and the questions he is forced to answer are incapable
  of being answered in scientific ways. As matters now stand, 'legal
  insanity' is something entirely different from psychiatrists' notions
  of mental disease; it is as if there were 'legal pneumonia' as
  distinct from medically recognized pneumonias.

For the last few years ETC has featured a "Retrospect" section at the back of the journal. It contains short selections that appeared fifty years earlier in ETC. I find the Retrospect feature a most convenient and salutary way to time-bind with an earlier generation of general semantics thinkers. I hope my article has also provided a productive time-binding experience for its readers.

MARTIN H. LEVINSON, PH.D.*

* Martin H. Levinson, Ph.D., director of PROJECT SHARE, a New York City school-based drug prevention program, writes the ETC Books feature. (The complete text of ETC vol. I, no. 1 is available at the IGS web site at www.general-semantics.org.)