# In what esteem is General Semantics held these days? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 3, 2006, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023 "2006-07-03T05:59:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/1 "2006-07-03T05:59:48Z")
I recently got a copy of _Language in Thought and Action_ (Third Edition) by Hayakawa and before getting too far into it, I want to know whether semanticists these days think the ideas contained therein are worth anyone’s time. If I find it interesting, would it be worthwhile from an intellectual perspective to seek out Korzybski’s own works? (That is, are the insights contained therein useful or just amusing?) As a side note, what about Neuro-Linguistic Programming? It seems to be a simple bag of tricks to make someone more comfortable around you, but it’s been breathlessly hyped as this wonderful secret. Does it have any meaningful connection to GS? Is it a crock of shit? Are GS and NLP both crocks of shit? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/2 "2006-07-03T06:50:02Z")
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I did read _Science and Sanity_ and it’s quite a slog. I have not read Hayakawa’s books, but I understand they are a lot more accessible. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/3 "2006-07-03T06:55:12Z")
I thought General Semantics was a lefty in the Alliance for Progress League, at least until the CIA dropped out? IIRC, he had a decent heater, but couldn’t find the plate with his breaking stuff. Screwed up his shoulder, was supposed to have Tommy John surgery and maybe get a look from the Braves next spring… ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/4 "2006-07-03T07:49:26Z")
[QUOTE=Oakminster] I thought General Semantics was a lefty in the Alliance for Progress League, at least until the CIA dropped out? IIRC, he had a decent heater, but couldn’t find the plate with his breaking stuff. Screwed up his shoulder, was supposed to have Tommy John surgery and maybe get a look from the Braves next spring… [/QUOTE] This has to be the biggest _non sequitur_ I’ve ever read in GQ. > [@Voyager](#): > > I don’t know the answer to your question, but I did read Science and Sanity and it’s quite a slog. This puts me in mind of what little I do know about GS, and why I’m so leery of it: Korzybski’s ‘unsanity’, his (apparent) idea that you could make yourself sane by rejecting two-valued logic, and the cloud of weirdos (including Hubbard, of Scamology fame) hanging around this field like a miasma of mosquitoes. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/5 "2006-07-03T13:30:34Z")
There doesn’t seem to be any general recognition of the usefulness of either General Semantics or Neurolinguistic Programming among scientists in related fields like linguistics or psychology. You would expect that if researchers in either GS or NLP had made interesting progress in explaining things that people in related fields would be willing to quote results from them. Instead, many people outside those fields dismiss them as being just a collection of obvious and unoriginal statements mixed with a lot of not particularly useful jargon. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/6 "2006-07-03T14:57:46Z")
There is at least one “serious” journal for General Semantics still in operation, because I know someone who writes for it. However, his articles are trying to create a new non-Einsteinian physics which is why I put serious into quotes. I know of no one outside the group of GS acolytes who consider him anything other than a crackpot scientifically. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/7 "2006-07-03T22:41:44Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] There is at least one “serious” journal for General Semantics still in operation, because I know someone who writes for it. However, his articles are trying to create a new non-Einsteinian physics which is why I put serious into quotes. I know of no one outside the group of GS acolytes who consider him anything other than a crackpot scientifically. [/QUOTE] Anyone who wants to mix GS or NLP or _anything_ of the sort with physics is hereby referred to Alan Sokal’s groundbreaking article in the field, [\* Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity\*](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/8 "2006-07-03T23:39:21Z")
[QUOTE=Mathochist] Anyone who wants to mix GS or NLP or _anything_ of the sort with physics is hereby referred to Alan Sokal’s groundbreaking article in the field, [\* Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity\*](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html). [/QUOTE] I happen to know the graphic designer of the journal Social Text, so I was well aware of this when the brouhaha first occurred. But Sokal’s article really has no relevance, joke or not. The GS people aren’t slinging bullshit for the sake of it, as so many of Sokal’s targets were in reality doing. They are true believers. Whether this makes them more or less dangerous is hard to say. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/9 "2006-07-04T00:11:18Z")
For me, its main value was to inspire a couple of moderately interesting science fiction novels by A.E. Van Vogt, _The Players of Null-A_ and I forgot the other title. I dug how the heroes of these tales got themselves out of dangerous scrapes and beat the bad guys by remembering to adjust their thinking to non-Aristotelian categories. Which is what the cryptic phrase “null-A” of the title refers to. Robert Anton Wilson, who is a definitely interesting writer, also claims to have embraced GS, and to demonstrate it by writing an essay or two in “E-prime,” which means English without the verb _be_, without the use of _be_ as a copula to equate two things, because according to GS all mental confusion results from saying that anything “is” something, because no two things are exactly alike, or something like that. So in E-prime you don’t say “A is B.” Only less definite shades of meaning, like “A seems like B to me” or “I find A as B.” But since Wilson hasn’t used E-prime in most of his writings, I’m skeptical about his claim to be a General Semanticist. It’s probably more like one among many new ways of using the brain that he has been experimenting with. I don’t go for GS myself, but the E-prime argument has reminded me to be more careful about assigning entities to categories; after all, that way lies prejudice, thinking that “all Armenians are no good,” to take a random example, or anything that denies the uniqueness of individuals. I wonder if E-prime was influenced by the grammar of Korzybski’s native language Polish, which does not necessarily use the copula verb _byc’_. In normal Polish, instead of saying “A is B,” they can simply say “A B,” where the _is_ness of the sentence is implicit. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/10 "2006-07-04T00:36:06Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] For me, its main value was to inspire a couple of moderately interesting science fiction novels by A.E. Van Vogt, _The Players of Null-A_ and I forgot the other title. I dug how the heroes of these tales got themselves out of dangerous scrapes and beat the bad guys by remembering to adjust their thinking to non-Aristotelian categories. Which is what the cryptic phrase “null-A” of the title refers to. [/QUOTE] That was the second in the series - the first is _World of Null-A_. Actually, I read Science and Sanity to see if it would help me figure out what was going on in those books. It didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/11 "2006-07-04T00:54:50Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] I happen to know the graphic designer of the journal Social Text, so I was well aware of this when the brouhaha first occurred. But Sokal’s article really has no relevance, joke or not. The GS people aren’t slinging bullshit for the sake of it, as so many of Sokal’s targets were in reality doing. They are true believers. Whether this makes them more or less dangerous is hard to say. [/QUOTE] Who knows what the Social Text people really believe. I do believe that the GS crowd do. I know a first class mathematician who got started by reading Korzybski and, for all I know, still believes in it. But he wove it into his mathematics when he was young and no longer does. Over the years, his gods have included Mao and Enver Hoxha, so you can judge his judgment by that. Nonetheless his mathematics is first rate. At any rate, I think GS is a crock, but then I believe that 90% of everything is. ---
**Author:** ![Ring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Ring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ring)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/12 "2006-07-04T03:39:18Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] For me, its main value was to inspire a couple of moderately interesting science fiction novels by A.E. Van Vogt, _The Players of Null-A_ and I forgot the other title. [/QUOTE] Not to be nitpicky but it’s the _ **Pawns** of Null-A._ One of my favorite old timey scifi novels. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/13 "2006-07-04T03:50:25Z")
It’s been released under both the titles _The Players of Null A_ and _The Pawns of Null A_. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/14 "2006-07-04T03:56:29Z")
A link for people, like myself, who have no idea what the heck you were talking about. [General Semantics Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/15 "2006-07-04T04:51:02Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > You would expect that if researchers in either GS or NLP had made interesting progress in explaining things that people in related fields would be willing to quote results from them. My thoughts exactly, based on what I’ve read (and not read) in my own research. I was just wondering it there were anything to contradict that in respectable peer-reviewed journals. (You know, as opposed to the ones that try to use linguistics and psychology to disprove physics.) **Johanna** : It seems GS is the Kevin Bacon of weird ideas in the latter 20th Century. 😉 I’ve heard of all of the people and ideas you’ve mentioned (well, I first heard of the ‘Null-A’ novels when I started researching GS) and I’ve read _Illuminatus!_, Robert Anton Wilson’s best-known head trip. I also came across E-Prime online about a decade ago and filed it away. I never made the connection between it and anything else. This is certainly an enlightening thread. **Mathochist** : Heh. Sokal truly is outstanding in his field, isn’t he? ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/16 "2006-07-04T10:03:34Z")
I bought General Semantics at 34. It split three-for-two when it hit 40, but sunk like a stone when its CEO was accused of shaking down other languages for grammar like a common thief. Robin ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/17 "2006-07-04T10:51:15Z")
I’ve had occasion to talk about NLP with several people - practitioners, teachers, therapists, researchers, psychologists, sceptics and so on. There is no scientific evidence to corroborate any of the major claims made within the ‘canonical’ texts of NLP. AFAIK the only ‘tenet’ of NLP that has been subjected to some sort of empirical testing was the claim that eye direction indicted memory retrieval or fabrication (ie whether someone was telling the truth or lying). The test found no evidene of any such correlation. However, those who believe in NLP believe that it has demonstrable value regardless of this apparent lack of independent corroboration. I know at least two practising therapists who say that NLP works, and that’s the important thing. I personally believe that this raises many questions concerning what we mean when we say something ‘works’. In many cases, the ‘proof’ that something (in this case NLP) actualy works comes from first-hand validation (we know the patient says she feels less ‘phobic’ because she tells us so). Unfortunately, first-hand validation is next-to-useless in _some_ fields of study. For one thing, it’s notoriously unreliable (part of my job exploits the fact that people can be encouraged to come to firm conclusions that are false). What’s more, it’s ubiquitous: anyone who champions Therapy X based on first-hand validation has to face the fact that for every other type of therapy in the world that there has ever been, includng ones he or she thinks are nonsense, there is just as much first-hand validation. My advice: caveat emptor. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/18 "2006-07-04T14:39:58Z")
> [@ianzin](#): > > There is no scientific evidence to corroborate any of the major claims made within the ‘canonical’ texts of NLP. [snip] I know at least two practising therapists who say that NLP works, and that’s the important thing. I personally believe that this raises many questions concerning what we mean when we say something ‘works’. To me, it raises questions as to what kinds of people we allow to be practicing therapists. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/19 "2006-07-04T19:55:12Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] It’s been released under both the titles _The Players of Null A_ and _The Pawns of Null A_. [/QUOTE] My paperback version of Players mentions that it is also called Pawns on the cover. I _knew_ I should have mentioned that! They used to do that all the time. I have a copy of _Foundation_ called “The 1,000 Year Plan”, and a copy of _Second Foundation_ called “The Man Who Upset the Universe.” \ ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/20 "2006-07-05T03:33:32Z")
[QUOTE=ianzin] Unfortunately, first-hand validation is next-to-useless in _some_ fields of study. For one thing, it’s notoriously unreliable (part of my job exploits the fact that people can be encouraged to come to firm conclusions that are false). [/QUOTE] I’m curious to know what your job is. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023.md?page=2)