To: gs Subj: [GS] Book reviews? ------------------------ I'm compiling a list of books that may interest people interested in GS. If you've read one of the following books, please post a review. What books should be added to this list? (and which subtracted?) How about key magazine articles? I've put the list in alphabetical order by author, but have ordered the books in terms of what I currently consider to be their most important work (and of course I may be mistaken in my evaluations of their relative merit). ==================================================================== Owen Barfield The rediscovery of meaning, and other essays Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby (ed.) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the generation of culture Gregory Bateson Steps to an ecology of mind A sacred unity : further steps to an ecology of mind Mind and nature : a necessary unity Some components of socialization for trance Sanford I. Berman Words, meanings, and people Understanding and being understood Logic and general semantics : writings of Oliver L. Reiser and others (edited by Berman) Ludwig von Bertalanffy General System Theory Max Black Language and philosophy: studies in method Joseph Samuel Bois The art of awareness: a textbook on general semantics and epistemics Explorations in awareness Breeds of men: toward the adulthood of humankind ("Portions of this work were first published in somewhat different form under the title _Breeds of men: post-Korzybskian general semantics_.") D. David Bourland, Jr. (?) To Be or Not to Be (the E-prime anthology) Joseph Gottland Brin Introduction to functional semantics Jacob Bronowski The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (ISBN 0-300-02192-5) Gina Cerminara Insights for the Age of Aquarius [1973] Stuart Chase The Tyranny of Words Power of Words Danger--men talking! A background book on semantics and communication Guides to straight thinking, with 13 common fallacies Roads to agreement; successful methods in the science of human relations Francis Perry Chisholm Introductory lectures on general semantics, a transcription of a course given at the Institute of General Semantics Antoy M. Economides A Non-Aristotelian study of philosophy [Thesis (B.A.)--American Univ. at Cairo] Margaret Gorman General semantics and contemporary Thomism S. I. (Samuel Ichiye) Hayakawa Language in Thought and Action (ISBN 0-15-648240-1) Symbol, status, and personality [1963] The use and misuse of language; selections from Etc.: a review of general semantics. (Edited and with a foreword by Hayakawa) Our language and our world; selections from Etc.: a review of general semantics, 1953-1958. (Edited by Hayakawa) Language, meaning, and maturity; selections from Etc., a review of general semantics, 1943-1953. (edited by Hayakawa) C. N. Hu Zen: A Semantic Approach Kenneth G. Johnson General Semantics: An Outline Survey Conference on Research Designs in General Semantics, 1st, Pennsylvania State University, 1969. Wendell Johnson People in quandaries; the semantics of personal adjustment Your most enchanted listener Verbal man; the enchantment of words Language and speech hygiene; an application of general semantics Living with change: the semantics of coping Marjorie Mercer Kendig Congress on General Semantics (2d : 1941 : University of Denver) Papers from the second American congress on general semantics, University of Denver, August 1941, non-Aristorelian methodology (applied) for sanity in our time, compiled Congress on General Semantics. 3d, University of Denver, 1949. Five selected papers from the Third Congress on General Semantics, Denver, Colorado, July 22, 23, 24, 1949 Ken Keyes Taming Your Mind (was: How to develop your thinking ability (1950)) Susan P. Kodish & Bruce I. Kodish Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of Gen. Sem. (ISBN 0-910780-10-7) Alfred Korzybski Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics Time-binding: the general theory: two papers, 1924-1926 Manhood of Humanity General Semantics Seminar 1937 General semantics, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and prevention Bart Kosko Fuzzy Thinking: the New Science of Fuzzy Logic (ISBN 0-7868-8021-X) George Lakoff Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee The Fine Art of Propaganda Irving J. Lee Language Habits in Human Affairs: An Introduction to General Semantics (foreword by Alfred Korzybski) The language of wisdom and folly; background readings in semantics How to talk with people; a program for preventing troubles that come when people talk together Customs and crises in communication; cases for the study of some barriers and breakdowns Handling barriers in communication; lecture-discussions and conferee's handbook Theodore Longabaugh General semantics: an introduction Edward MacNeal Mathsemantics: making numbers talk sense Joseph Mickel Human communication and general semantics Catherine Minteer Words and what they do to you: beginning lessons in general semantics for junior and senior high school Mary S. Morain Bridging worlds through general semantics: selections from the first 40 years of Et cetera, 1943-1983 Ross Evans Paulson Language, science, and action: Korzybski's general semantics: a study in comparative intellectual history Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) Peirce on signs: writings on semiotic Semiotic and significs: the correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Lady Victoria Welby Essays in the philosophy of science Reasoning and the logic of things: the Cambridge conferences lectures of 1898 Philosophical writings of Charles Peirce Mathematical philosophy Chance, love, and logic: philosophical essays Values in a universe of chance: selected writings of Charles S. Peirce William H. Pemberton Sanity fOr Survival: A Semantic Approach to Conflict Resolution ... and now let's talk about that! Neil Postman Crazy talk, stupid talk: how we defeat ourselves by the way we talk and what to do about it Teaching as a subversive activity Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Language in America, edited by Neil Postman Conscientious objections: stirring up trouble about language, technology, and education How to Watch TV News Anatol Rapoport Science and the Goals of Man: a study in semantic orientation. (foreword by S. I. Hayakawa) Operational Philosophy: integrating knowledge and action General Semantics: its place in science Semantics General system theory: essential concepts & applications Oliver Leslie Reiser 1895-1974 The integration of human knowledge: a study of the formal foundations and the social implications of unified science Edward Sapir 1884-1939 Culture, language, and personality: selected essays The function of an international auxiliary language Language: an introduction to the study of speech The psychology of culture: a course of lectures Totality Lee O. Thayer (ed.) Communication: general semantics perspectives A. E. van Vogt The World of Null-A (SBN 425-03322-8) The Pawns of Null-A Donald E. Washburn and Dennis R. Smith (editors) Coping with increasing complexity: implications of general semantics and general systems theory. An outgrowth of a joint conference held at the University of Denver, May 1970, sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics and the Society for General Systems Research Harry L. Weinberg Levels of Knowing and Existence (ISBN 0-910780-00-5) Benjamin Lee Whorf Language, thought, and reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf / edited and with an introduction by John B. Carroll (foreword by Stuart Chase) William James Williams General semantics and the social sciences: reflections and new directions Semantic behavior and decision making Robert Anton Wilson Quantum Psychology Prometheus Rising (?) The Illuminati Letters (?) Comments by Arthur Hlavaty (Jan 94): ==================================== _Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics_ by Alfred Korzybski. The Good Book. I must admit that I've never been able to slog through this one, and I consider Korzybski, like McLuhan, a communications genius who didn't communicate very well. Fortunately others have passed his ideas along. _Language in Thought and Action_ by S. I. Hayakawa. Probably the best intro to Korzybski. One should remember that Hayakawa(1941), who wrote this book is not Hayakawa(1966 and after) whose actions as college president and senator inspired people to suggest that he might have much to learn from the earlier Hayakawa. _People in Quandaries_ by Wendell Johnson. Another good intro, with emphasis on education issues. _Insights for the Age of Aquarius_ by Gina Cerminara. A dumb title, and some may be put off by the book's positive approach to parapsycholgy and other "fringe" stuff. But the author applies the GS approach rigorously to these questions. Comments by Ronald Hale-Evans (Jan '94): ======================================== _Language in Thought and Action_ by S. I. Hayakawa (1990 edition) I find it much more accessible than, say, _Science and Sanity_. IMHO Hayakawa's language also has a brisk, invigorating feel that really makes you want to get out there and apply GS principles in your own life; I sometimes feel reading it like Larry Niven's superintelligent post-human Protectors, who awaken from their metamorphoses muttering to themselves, "How can I have been so _stupid_?" Comments by Eric S. Raymond (Jul '94): ====================================== Comment on Lakoff's _Women,_Fire,_and_Dangerous_Things_: This is a marvelously thought-provoking and subversive book, large parts of which read like an independent rediscovery of GS principles and techniques by a research linguist concerned with the psychology of category representation in natural languages. Lakoff marshals powerful theoretical arguments and field evidence against several reigning dogmas in linguistics, including Chomsky's "Universal Grammar" and anti-Worfianism. He goes beyond this to a principled attack on the Aristotelian assumption of perfect categories, and shows how this philosophical error has systematically thwarted the understanding of category formation and use in natural languages. Strongly recommended, especially for anyone with a background in linguistics. Also, I concur with Arthur's recommendation of "People In Quandaries" as an excellent introduction to GS. I learned GS from it at the age of 12. Allow me to recommend "The Adapted Mind: Studies In Evolutionary Psychology" (Cosmides & Tooby). [It] has nothing directly to do with GS, but the analyses of human mental organization that come from asking questions about adaptive function have *really powerful* philosophical implications. [...] the argument [...] that the "reasonable validity" of phenomenal experience is an engineering consequence of human evolution [...] is not an insight contained in the book, but it is one strongly implied by things the book demonstrates. Comments by Nancy Lebovitz (Jul '94): ===================================== I read _The Tyranny of Words_ when I was a kid, and it convinced me to be careful and specific with language--to the point where I generally only make absolute statements when I'm joking or very upset. I read _Science and Sanity_ in college--it didn't seem to have much in it that wasn't in TToW except for the idea of time-binding. Comments by Craig Presson (Jul '94): ==================================== Has anyone mentioned the book _Mathsemantics_? I have not read it yet but I skimmed some of it recently and it is definitely in the GS mainstream. Macneal has been around in GS circles for a while; he served as exec. secretary of ISGS, for example. He works as a business consultant specializing in air travel analysis (that was a new one on me). The first chapter, titled "A Fruitful Start" uses the familiar example of a problem your third-grade teacher probably told you was one of the great unsolvable problems in mathematics: 2 apples + 5 oranges ----------- and mentions that just over one in four job applicants (all of whom appeared in response to an ad for people "good with numbers") answered correctly: 2 apples + 5 oranges ----------- 7 fruit The book roars off from there. Macneal believes that he has invented, or at least, identified, a new field which he names "mathsemantics": "The word 'mathsemantics', by the way, happily contains every letter in 'mathematics' in the same sequence , plus just the letters s and n. Something New, slightly nutty, sounds nice." The book is not "rigorous" in the mathematical sense, but Macneal does condense out 29 "mathsemantical propositions", which are really more like pithy observations, e.g., 1. Whenever we add _things_, we must necessarily add _different_ things, which we must then group together under the same _name_. 3. For a count to make sense, you have to know what you are counting. 9. Math enthusiasts need to watch their language. 27. Percentages are dangerous social and economic tools that appear easy only to math teachers and the inexperienced. Other recent books that overlap with this are Paulos, _Innumeracy_, and Huff, _How to Lie with Statistics_. _Mathsemantics_ is an attempt to show why we have the problems described in the other two books, and to an extent how we might start avoiding them. I recommend every teacher of K-12 mathematics should be beaten over the head with this book until its contents are fully absorbed. Those few who might be capable of changing their methods as a result of merely _reading_ may only need one good whack. Comments by Richard Plourde (Aug '94): ====================================== Background: the Weinberg and Kodish(1-2) books were recommended during a conversation I had with somebody (I don't remember who) at the Institute of General Semantics. I gave as my background my long-time informal familiarities with philosophy and psychology studies, that I had read (several times) Language in Thought and Action (5th edition), and that I had been particularly intrigued by the GS descriptions in the A.E. van Vogt S.F. novel The World of Null-A. Harry L Weinberg: Levels of Knowing and Existence Studies in General Semantics Institute of General Semantics 163 Engle Street Englewood, NJ 07631 ISBN 0-910780-00-5 This struck me as a fairly rigorous while still informal treatment of GS as I've come to understand it so far. It worked at many levels of abstraction -- it was filled with illuminating yet credible examples. I remember experiencing a big 'Ah-HA!' with Weinberg's illustrations of multiordinality -- some of the power of GS seems to be 'real-time' but we don't spend all our time in interactions with others; after his descriptions of multiordinality my 'brooding' experiences will never be the same. The order and clarity of presentation were, in particular, quite satisfying. I don't know if what he presented is 'mainstream GS' but it made sense, it agreed with my experience, and it has already modified the way I look at the world. The final chapters were less satisfying to me than the earlier chapters. His chapter on Religion seemed almost irrelevant to the concepts presented earlier, and his chapter on cybernetics seemed (at least to the degree it overlapped my engineering experience with control systems) inaccurate. Susan Presby Kodish Ph.D. Drive Yourself Sane Bruce I. Kodish Using the Uncommon Sense of Gen. Sem. Institute of General Semantics ISBN 0-910780-10-7 I was much less satisfied with this than with the Weinberg. In some ways, the best part (for me) was the glossary. (I wish that more authors would include a glossary -- even with the limitation that "whatever you say a thing is, it is not," the glossary, even if of limited utility, is a great aid in getting a 'handle' on things. I found myself using the Kodish glossary while reading Weinberg.) The presentation, from my perspective, was somewhat disorganized, and had a greater quality of mysticism than I thought necessary or helpful. My criticisms, however, are based on my highly subjective perspective as a person who has been a student of contemporary science for many, many years. My criticisms might not apply to the non-scientist. S.I. Hayakawa Language in Thought and Action (5th ed.) Alan R. Hayakawa Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. ISBN 0-15-648240-1 In some ways, I found this to be a model of clarity -- while in other ways I found it to be a political tract, with all the semantic seduction one might expect from such a book. The biggest shortcoming I found was that it passed over (or at least de-emphasized to the point where I didn't notice it) multiordinality. The 'levels of abstraction' description seemed to miss the point almost entirely -- so perhaps this is not a book about general semantics as much as a book about semantics -- in general. Still, with its charm and clarity, I'm happy that it (and the van Vogt novel) were the first things I read. Hayakawa may not be a good place to end, but is (I think) a good place to start. A.E. van Vogt The World of Null-A -- rev. 1970 Berkley Publishing Corp. SBN 425-03322-8 Gilbert Gosseyn (Go-Sane) is the hero of this novel, and what van Vogt considers the epitomization of the GS-mind. This is a blazingly good story, and a wonderful antidote to anyone who has overdosed on "Atlas Shrugged." Is it GS? Who cares! Jacob Bronowski The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination Yale University ISBN 0-300-02192-5 Bronowski is *not* a student of GS. Neither General Semantics nor Korzybski are mentioned anyplace in the text. The 'rules' of GS are not evident -- nowhere is there a single mention that "the map is not the territory." The book consists of a series of transcriptions of lectures at Yale delivered as "Silliman Lectures" in 1967. The lecture titles are: 1: The Mind as an Instrument for Understanding 2: The Evolution and Power of Symbolic Language 3: Knowledge as Algorithm and as Metaphor 4: The Laws of Nature and the Nature of Laws 5: Error, Progress, and the Concept of Time 6: Law and Individual Responsibility While this series of lectures is not about GS, it seems to me that, to a very high degree, it *is* GS. The best description I can come up with is one I quote from the introduction by S.E. Luria: "A deceptive beginning, introducing the theme of appearance versus essence by way of a charming poem by Yeats, promptly leads into a discussion of some of the most complex areas of knowledge, where the scholar--the "natural philosopher," as Bronowski chooses to call himself--comes to grips with the epistemological questions that concern the nature of limits to human understanding. ... "The nature and power of human language as a creative instrument for ordering and giving structure to human experience; the nature of time and the meaning of relativity; the limits of physical measurements as interpreted by quantum mechanics; the boundaries to formalization of knowledge inherent in the axiomatic structure of mathematics--these and other topics become accessible, indeed humanized, by the author's insistence that they should be looked at not just as constuctions within science but as expressions of the human mind defining itself in action. "Throughout the book the interest of the reader is stimulated by the interplay of two themes that recur almost like melodies in a sonata and give the text its intellectual unity. These themes are the role of conscious human activity in the creation of knowledge and the imaginative content of that knowledge." Bronowski lives up to his introduction. No -- Bronowski provides few 'tools,' so this is *not* GS. But Bronowski opens the reader's eyes to what might be, given the tools, and so paves the road -- indeed, he presents an engraved invitation to sanity. Comments by Richard Plourde (Apr '95): ====================================== We've discussed fuzzy logic from time to time on this list, speculating about what, if any, tie-in there might be between it and g.s.. A recent book, _Fuzzy Thinking -- the New Science of Fuzzy Logic_ by Bart Kosko (Hyperion, (c) 1993 ISBN 0-7868-8021-X) suggests a potentially strong connection. Consider the short quotation below: "The logical and the factual do not meet. ... "Scientific claims or statements are inexact and provisional. They depend on dozens of *simplifying* assumptions and on a particular choice of words and symbols and on 'all other things being equal.' There are just too many molecules involved in a 'fact' for a declarative sentence to cover them all. When you speak, you simplify. And when you simplify, you lie." I found some parts of the book almost incomprehensible, and other parts of the book -- uhhh -- a rather unrestrained and, I thought, angry dismisal of the general disregard for fuzzy logic in academic circles of the U.S.. Still, the parts that were clear and to the point were quite illuminating -- not just the not-bivalent (non- Aristotelian) logic, but the strong consciousness presented of multi- source causes and multiple-consequence effects. One of the traps of syllogism that Kosko rather thoroughly explores is that syllogism tends to lead us to thinking of single-causes and single-effects. In general, that's not how the world works, as anyone who has ever tried to set up a laboratory experiment (that excludes all causes except the one being tested) can attest. Neither true nor false but both at the same time in degrees; not "if this then that" It's non-Aristotelian, all right. Towards the end of the book, Kosko delves into neural networks -- "wet stuff," the way our brains work. It's a fascinating description, roughly at a level you might expect in Scientific American (simplified but not so simplified as to become meaningless, yet not so jargon- filled and detailed as to be comprehensible only to researchers in the field.) One particularly startling example was of self-learning neural networks applied to pattern matching. The feedback mechanisms in a machine designed that way are such as to generate a pattern match even if there is no pattern! Sounds human to me. I concluded that fuzzy logic is *not* g.s., but that there is a lot to be gained in an appreciation of g.s. through the appreciation of fuzzy logic. Some sections of the book were what I considered almost bizarrely personal (the section about working-out then meditating in a hot tub and having an image of a water-bed suspended above the hot tub with strings dangling down struck me as -- odd), nonetheless "Fuzzy Thinking" provides a rigorous approach to non-Aristotelian logic that I found most useful. -- To post to the General Semantics mailing list or to respond to a post on it, send email to "gs@lumina.ucsd.edu" For administrative functions, send email to the host, John McPherson, at "mcpherso@lumina.ucsd.edu"