From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 20:23:24 MDT
Jef writes
> Lee writes
>
> >> Maybe general semantics and a course of logic should
> >> be included in journalism schools.
> >
> > Yes, it is indeed sad to see even young reporters
> > lapse immediately upon graduation to the two-valued
> > prevalent Aristotelian orientations, adopt bad s.r,
> > fail to adopt *structural* and multi-ordinal
> > semantic relations, employ elementalistic terminology,
> > intensional definitions, undue generalization,
> > unanalyzed linguistic habits., to such a degree that
> > it's probably too late to re-educate the younger
> > generation with null-A non-habitual s.r, remove
> > semantic blockages,.
>
> Could it be that "s.r." refers to the "semantic relations" mentioned
Bingo! The younger generation is not beyond hope. (But there
is just *one* period in "s.r".) (And I corrected my misspelling
of "semantic".)
> in this intriguing, but strangely less than clear writing about writing?
>
> Lee, would you do us the favor of elucidating the above?
Alas, the above was meant only for those who have also drank
(heavily or lightly) at the waters of the writings of the
great Polish-American semanticist, Count Alfred Habdank
Scarbek Korzybski. Anyone who has struggled with even the
first fifty pages or so will never forget the unmistakable
style and literary pretensions of "Science and Sanity".
It is not clear that null-A prose such as the above can be
faithfully translated into an elementalistic Aristotelian
linguistic tradition such as ordinary English. I had thought
that I was speaking to a fellow devotee, Devon, but it turns
out that he was not a Korzybski initiate after all.
But I will make a short list of the most frequently employed
terms and conventions:
., et cetera, when in the middle of a sentence
,. et cetera, when at the end of a sentence
s.r semantic relations
m.o multi-ordinality, or multi-ordinal
non-el non-elementalistic
I take it back. People should read Science and Sanity (or
at least try) in order to appreciate what happens IMO when
a genius adopts a brilliant and revolutionary new worldview,
but doesn't appreciate or know about Hayek (or about
evolutionary epistemology).
Another advantage to spending a few score hours wrapped up
with Science and Sanity is that one can speak and write just
like the great man himself, provided, of course, that one
keeps a copy of S & S very, *very* close to one's keyboard.
Lee
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