Post by Michael F. StemperI recently re-read van Vogt's _The World of Null-A_, which seems
to bear the same relationship to General Semantics as does
_Atlas Shrugged_ to libertarianism.
Some chapters have a little epigraph, relating a gem of General
Semantics thought to the coming events. These are attributed,
B.R
A.K.
C.J.K
H.W.
C.M.C.
E.T.B.
W.W.L.
T.H.
J.W.C.,Jr.
It seems likely to me that "A.K." is Alfred Korzybski, and that
"J.W.C.,Jr." is John W. Campbell, Jr. Does anybody have any ideas
as to who the other folks might be?
Found the following. All errors are mine as it did not copy nice.y.
ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 65, No. 3 (July 2008), pp.
286-288 (3 pages)
QUOTATIONS FROM THE WORLD OF NULL- A
Nitram Nosnivel*
After reading Science and Sanity, A.E. Van Vogt decided to write a work
of science fiction titled The World of Null- A, which was published in
book form 1948. The volume has since gone on to become an important part
of the science fiction literary canon and it has attracted many people
to general semantics. The following are some quotations that are used at
the beginning of the book's chapters. (FYI Null- A Continuum by John C.
Wright, which is a sequel to The World of Null- A, is reviewed in this
edition of ETC.)
Common sense, do what it will, cannot avoid being surprised
occasionally. The object of science is to spare this emotion and create
mental habits which shall be in such close accord with the habits of the
world as to secure that nothing shall be unexpected.
Bertrand Russell
The gifted... Aristotle... affected perhaps the largest number of people
ever influenced by a single man. . . .Our tragedies began when the
"intensional" biologist Aristotle took the lead over the "extensional"
mathematical philosopher Plato and formulated all the primitive
identifications, subject-predicativism...into an imposing system, which
for more than two thousand years we were not allowed to revise under
penalty of prosecution. . ..Because of this, his name has been used for
two-valued doctrines of Aristotelianism, and, conversely, the
many-valued realities of modern science are given the name
non-Aristotelianism. ...
Alfred Korzybskj
To be is to be related.
Cassius J. Keyser
286
Quotations from The World of Null-A 287
To be acceptable as scientific knowledge, a truth must be a deduction
from other truths.
Nicomachean Ethics, circa 340 B.C.
The human nervous system is structurally of inconceivable complexity. It
is estimated that there are in the human brain about twelve thousand
millions of nerve cells or neurons, and more than half of these are in
the cerebral cortex. Were we to consider a million cortical nerve cells
connected with one another in groups of only two neurons each and
compute the possible combinations, we would find the number of possible
interneuronic connection-patterns to be represented by ten to the power
of two million, seven hundred, and eighty-three thousand. For
comparison. . .probably the whole sidereal universe does not contain
more than ten to the power of sixty-six atoms.
Alfred Korzybski
We copy animals in our nervous processes.... In man such nervous
reactions lead to non-survival, pathological states of infantilism,
infantile private and public behavior. . ..And the more technically
developed a nation or race is, the more cruel, ruthless, predatory, and
commercialized its systems tend to become... all because we continue to
think like animals and have not learned how to think consistently
like human beings.
Alfred Korzybski
A famous Victorian-era physicist said, "There's nothing for the next
generation of physicists to do except measure the next decimal place."
In the next generation. . . Planck developed the quantum theory that led
to Bohr's atomic structure work. ... Einstein's mathematics were proven
out by some extremely delicate decimal-place measuring. . ..Obviously,
the next question is going to involve the next set of decimal places.
Gravity is too little understood. So are magnetic field phenomena. . . .
Sooner or later somebody will slip in another decimal place, and the
problem will be solved.
John W. Campbell, Jr.
Who, then is sane?
Horace, Satires, circa 25 B.C.
Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it
imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows.
Eric Temple Bell
288 ETC • July 2008
"What you say a thing is, it is not"...It is much more. It is a compound
in the largest sense. A chair is not just a chair. It is a structure of
inconceivable complexity, chemically, atomically, electronically, etc.
Therefore, to think of it simply as a chair is to confine the nervous
system to what Korzybski calls an identification. It is the totality of
such identification that create the neurotic, the unsane, and the insane
individual.
Anonymous
* Nitram Nosnivel is fond of general semantics and word games. He
particularly enjoys analyzing
words to see if they make sense spelled backward. He holds a DHP degree
from UYN and makes his
home in Wen Kroy, Ytic.