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KNOWLEDGE, UNCERTAINTY AND COURAGE : HEISENBERG AND KORZYBSKI

Robert P. Pula

In 1.940 Gaston Bachelard published a statementwhich nicely focuses one of the human points I wishto make in this paper :

The psychological and even physiologi-cal conditions of a non-Aristotelian logichave been resolutely faced in the greatwork of Count Alfred Korzybski, Scienceand Sam. (1)

An avowed continuator of Korzybskian formulationsin the fields of neurology and medical epistemology,Russell Meyers, made a similar psycho-logicalobservation in 1958 :

Now that we are able to stand a littleapart from historical developments andview his life's work in some perspective,it can hardly be doubted that he grasped,as few had done before him and certainlynone had so systematically and comprehen-sively treated, the abiding significance oflinguistic habits and the communicativeprocesses-in-general to all of Man'sthinking-and-doing, from his loftiestmetaphysical, epistemological and mathe-matical efforts to the most casual, trivialand mundane performances of his every-day living.

. . . Korzybski's position was wholly com-parable to that of Copernicus and Galileo,who had been impelled by their privateinquiries during the Renaissance to challengethe popular ptolemaic cosmology andAristotelian mechanics of their day . Itrequired an uncommon personal integrity,an unusual brand of courage and a plenumof physical energy to spell out the overtand covert effects produced by thesewidely-pervading, pathologic neuro-se-mantic processes in the community ofhumans. Korzybski was, as we now know,quite up to this formidable task . (2)

Quite different responses to the dawning non-Aristotelian age can be noted in the behavior of twoof its hesitant giants in the 1920's : Max Planck andAlbert Einstein .

Kurt Mendelssohn, in The Quest for AbsoluteZero (wherein he repeatedly notes the formulationaland relative character of 'absolute zero' even if andeven when 'it' should be achieved) describes some ofthe preferences of Planck the man which inevitablyaffected the formulating and on-going semantic reac-tions of Planck as scientist :

The great success of the quantum the-ory which was demonstrated by Einstein'sand Bohr's work at first over-shadowedthe emptiness of the quantum concept assuch. Only Planck himself remainedreticent and cautious, realizing from thebeginning that his great theory was sadlyincomplete. As he saw it, there weretwo ways out of the dilemma : either thequantum concept was a mathematicaloddity or it must have a deep physicalmeaning. For a l

time he favoredthe first alternative . [Italics mine :R. P. P . ] His strong feeling that thelaws of nature must be 'absolute', re-quired relations between physical quan-tities which should be free from ambi-guity . . . He much disliked Boltzmann'sstatistical approach because, to his wayof thinking, it debased the simple gran-deur of thermodynamic quantities byhaving them interpreted in terms of prob-ability. In his search for the correctradiation formula it had been a severe blowfirst to realize that only the statisticalapproach would lead to the truth . . . Evenbefore his first paper on the radiationformula was published, Planck had tried,though unsuccessfully, to remove thequantum concept from this work . Hismain reason for failing to champion histheory during the years after the firstpublication and for ignoring Einstein'swork on it, was the hope that he wouldfind the way back to the continuity ofclassical physics . (3)

Planck's deep commitment to certainty is againhumanly noted by Mendelssohn :

Planck was a notoriously cautious manwho, when asked a question by one of hisresearch students would invariably reply :'I will give you my answer tomorrow' .However, he knew no caution where thelaws of thermodynamics were concerned,since he considered them as certainty . (4)

Even Einstein, whose work forced the uncom-fortable Planck to recognize 'the second alternative'(that the quantum concept had a deep physical mean-ing), was himself made uncomfortable by the in-creasing need for statistical and probabilistic me-thods and formulations right at the sharpest focusof greatest precision yet achieved by man : the newphysics which he was helping to lead onto the stageof human awareness . At the Fifth Solvay Congress

(1927) Born, Bohr and Heisenberg (led by Bohr) ar-gued the famous case for resolving the apparent con-flict between particle and wave models of atomicbehavior with the formulation of complementarity .For our purposes here, we need only stress the, forEinstein, unacceptable conclusion that " . . .the pro-babilities tell all there is to tell ." (5)

Einstein not only felt uncomfortable with whathe called ". . . this Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizingphilosophy," (6) he opposed it vigorously. Failing tomake his case in 1927, he returned to the attack atthe Sixth Solvay Congress in 1930 where he nearly'won' but was again 'defeated' by Bohr and had to'retreat', conceding that Heisenberg's principle ofindeterminacy was valid, but maintained his objectionto the notion that it was complete .

For the rest of his life Einstein searched forways to overthrow the uncertainty principle . BaneshHoffman points to " . . . his instinctive dislike of theidea of a probabilistic universe in which the behaviorof individual atoms depends on chance . " (7)

Einstein summed up his intuitive feel-ing about the quantum theory in the pic-turesque phrase "Gott wirfelt nicht,"which he used in various forms on manyoccasions. It can be ploddingly trans-lated "God does not play dice . " (8)

His refusal (inability) to internalize the princi-ple which he could not overthrow led Einstein to be-come increasingly an isolated figure among physicists(for whom 'uncertainty' threatened to become a newdogma) while he endured becoming the popular imageof the scientist-as-wizard .

These psycho-formulational points made hereare not intended as an attempt to in any way minimizethe achievements of the great men being discussed(how presumptuous that would be!) ; but preciselythese semantic reactive aspects not ordinarily men-tioned in discourse about scientific issues are what Iwant to stress later with relation to Korzybski'sresponse to Heisenberg.

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Leon Brillouin, in his instructive and curiously(for me) inspiring book, Scientific Uncertainty, andInformation, makes some cogent remarks about thepsycho-logics of scientific laws . We need them here:

. . . what is the actual value of laws andtheories, and why do we assign so muchworth to their discovery?

We may risk a new suggestion here :the importance of scientific laws mayvery well be due to a human factor . Ourminds like to deal with theories andgeneral laws, rather than large accumu-lations of unconnected data, which we find

hard to memorize . The satisfaction ofdiscovering a general scientific lawcorresponds to the personal pleasure ofthe scientist . . . .

When we speak of value, pleasure, orsatisfaction, we definitely introduce thehuman element . . . .

Scientific laws have a special valuefor the human scientist, but they arehuman also in another respect : theselaws are discovered by human minds ;they are invented by human imagination .

The general semanticist might object to Pro-fessor Brillouin's (apparently) elementalistic splitbetween 'mind' and 'imagination' . But ProfessorBrillouin is not (to my knowledge) a Korzybskiangeneral semanticist and therefore owes us nothingin this respect . With that non-elementalistic caveat,his continuing observations are useful, especially asthey do not come from a general semanticist :

A. The physical theory may be construedas a discovery, made by the human mind .It goes further than the empirical resultsand it seems to represent an additionalamount of information, an actual creationof negentropy by human thinking .

B . The physical theory can also be con-sidered as a work of imagination, some-thing like a piece of poetry. It adds agreat deal to the original information ;some of these additions may be valuableand some of them may have no value .This point of view was presented by somevery famous scientists and philosophers . (10) j

Well, the straw-man Aristotelian might say,which is it? Man either discovers or invents the'laws' of 'nature' . Brillouin eventually (as would ageneral semanticist) opts for a blend of 'both' --theories may be naively considered 'free' inventions('imagination') which must be tested on the basis ofpredictive value ('discovery' naively understood) . (11)What I want to stress here is his awareness of thepsycho-logical stresses which churn at the core ofhuman-scientific attempts to model 'reality' . KurtMendelssohn puts his finger on what may be the mostpotent generator of epistemological tension :

. . the human mind . . . delights in conceptsof symmetry . . . (12)

Symmetry or asymmetry? Certainty or uncer-tainty? The very tendency to ask such polar questionsKorzybski would evaluate as a reflection of 'Aristote-lian' patterns built into language (and, therefore,brain) structure. Some neurologists might suggestthat the either-or tendency (which seems fundamentally

(9)

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symmetrical in implication) may derive from the'split brain' inside the human skull, the hemispheresof which are described as superficially symmetrical(facilitated by the 'echo' effect across the corpuscallosum) but deeply asymmetrical (division of labor,individual cells as space-time events, etc . ) . (13)Whatever the 'reason', most humans (including, inmy view, those brains which express various East-ern world views)seem propelled toward symmetry --the formulational closed shop -- and here I see theevaluational mechanism which still makes Heisen-bergian uncertainty so frightening to so many andmakes Korzybski's immediate acceptance of andgeneralization of Heisenberg's principle so remarka-ble .

The formulation and propagation of the Uncer-tainty Principle (Unbestimmtheit : uncertainty orindeterminacy) by a group of workers at the vanguardof physics (and, therefore, the vanguard of what wemay call 'hard' human knowledge) set the scientificworld on its collective auditory cortex . Few could'believe their ears' . The shock value of Heisenberg's(and Bohr's and Born's) formulation was comparableto the 'jolt of observation' on an atomic 'particle' --the scale was, however, cosmic rather than merelysub-microscopic ; this paper itself is just one of asteadily increasing wave of reverberations : brainsset oscillating through time-binding .

Here are some 'ear-witness' accounts, a seriesof historically significant semantic reactions :

The principle of uncertainty . . . shookus all a good deal . After all, it said thatnature could not be described as a rigidmechanism of causes and effects . . . allthe successes of science, Newton's suc-cesses and those of the nineteenth century,seemed to have been won hitherto by fittingnature with just this kind of machine . Tosay suddenly that at the bottom those cau-sal chains are not true, that the wholething cannot be done -- that seemed astrange discovery, and a disagreeableone. (14)

This picture of an objective real worldaround us is what we have inherited fromthe Greeks, and we must get rid of itthrough surgery of the mind, howevercruel it may be . (15)

The great French thinker, HenriPoincarg, pointed out in his Science andHypothesis (1905, p. 145) that everygeneralization presupposes a belief inthe unity and simplicity of nature . Butsince that time, so much of a'revolution-ary' nature had appeared, -- Heisenberg'suncertainty principle_ is the most obvious-- that the faith in the orderliness of

nature has been shaken. For example,Professor G. N. Lewis tells us thatwe have not the slightest idea of whe-ther the belief in the simplicity ofnatural law (uniformity of nature) isdue to the structure of the objectiveworld, or to some hitherto unanalyzedtrait of human psychology .

. . Can the acceptance of Heisen-berg's uncertainty principle be used tojustify indeterminism ? And if this isso, can causality ever be restored toscience and rest on a firm foundation? (16)

Heisenberg was, not surprisingly, quite awareof the disturbance he had created and aware of strug-gles within himself in internalizing his own formula-tions. This awareness led him in 1934 to state :

. . . we [should] continually follow theexample of Columbus, who possessedthe courage to leave the known world inthe almost insane hope of finding landagain beyond the sea. (17)

He had previously noted, in 1932 :

. . . we must not forget that a highprice had to be paid for this . . . scienti-fic concept of the universe . Progressin science has been bought at the expenseof the possibility of making the phenomenaof nature immediately and directly com-prehensible to our way of thought . (18)

Brillouin, in his characteristically forthrightway, accepted the challenge and passed it on to hisfellow scientists :

Whether we like it or not, these arethe facts resulting from Bohr's and Heisen-berg's famous discussions . (19)

Bachelard brilliantly expresses the neuro-lin-guistic implications :

Realistic thought places the subjectbefore the predicate whereas experimenta-tion in microphysics starts with predi-cates about predicates, with remote pre-dicates, and then simply exerts itself tocoordinate the various manifestations ofa predicate. By converting the proposi-tions, but in the muted form proper tonon-Aristotelian logic which does not goso far as to postulate a subject in theabsolute, one would obtain formulae lessbrutal in their opposition . (20)

say?What then, finally, did Heisenberg (and Bohr)

The first thing I want to emphasize is thatthey were talking about almost nothing at all --surely as close to 'nothing at all' as any humans be-fore them hadleen able to speak with any degree ofprecision and with any degree of non-Alice in Won-derland respectability. It was perhaps this very'Alice' quality of the proceedings that gave Planckand Einstein pause .

(Let me apologize to the readers of this jour-nal for 'carrying coals to Newcastle' [or salt toWieliczka] in repeating what they must know in theirsleep. But since the uncertainty principle is at theheart of our discussion and since many who did notgrow up in those planet-rattling days may be readersof this special issue, I dare to proceed .)

But this 'nothing at all' was quickly perceivedto relate to everything in particular, and thus itsstill emerging impact .

To start with, Heisenberg saw his (and Ein-stein's) activity as far less revolutionary than thatof Kopernik (Copernicus) :

Copernicus's idea was much morean import from outside into the conceptsof the science of his time, and thereforecaused far more telling changes in sciencethan the ideas of modern physics are cre-ating today . (21)

He considered that 'revolutions' in modern physicscome not by upheaval from 'outside' but by consis-tent applications of existing theory from within . Thisperhaps explains why Einstein was not able to prevailagainst the Bohr-Heisenberg axis -- he was hoist byhis own (previously committed to) formulations .

Technically, the uncertainty formulation wasnecessitated by experiments in the mid-twenties inwhich attempts were being made to 'observe' thepositions of individual 'electrons' (which even todaymany do not recognize as 'only' a convenient infer-ence). Brillouin states the problem succinctly-

A new principle dominates physics now,the uncertainty principle, formulated byBohr and Heisenberg . There is a limitto the accuracy of experimental measure-ments . The scientist seeks to increase,as far as possible, the accuracy of hisobservations but he is always stopped byan unsurmountable obstacle : the pertur-bation brought by the measuring deviceitself to the object measured . In formerclassical theories, it was admissible toignore the role of the observer : it wasthought that the experimenter observedwhat was going on around him ; his pres-ence was not supposed to influence thecourse of events . In astronomy, or in

classical mechanics, this point of viewis defensible. But when we examineatoms or electrons, we cannot look atthese tiny elements without disturbingthem. The coupling between the ob-server and the observed cannot be ig-nored any more .

Let us try to sum up Bohr's concep-tions on the subject : electrons, protons,mesons, photons -- all these essentialcomponents of the material world can-not be considered as particles in theusual sense . We must conceive themas being between particles and waves .Our customary ideas, formed after themodel of everyday life, ['commonsense' : R. P. P . ] do not apply to theseultimate elements. Their nature sur-passes our understanding . In certainexperiments, a corpuscular descriptionis sufficient, but in other cases, thewave representation presents itselfmore naturally and the quantum conditionsjoin the two interpretations which lookedcontradictory at first sight .

If we use the model with particles,we have to give up describing their move-ments . . . .

Absolute determinism does not applyany more . Physical laws take on an essen-tially statistical value, but do not applyto the detail of the movement . (22)

You can have either the position or the velocity ;you may model the events as corpuscular or wave-like ; you may even combine the two models usingBohr's complementarity formulations : no matterhow you slice it, 2_u,_ are there and " . . , the proba-bilities tell all there is to tell ."

But why should these considerations, even nowseeming so precious and specialized, have createdsuch an uproar? Because workers within and outsideof the field of theoretical physics saw the implicationsfor human thinking in general .

Heisenberg participated in extending the uncer-tainty implications beyond the laboratory :

We have to discuss whether the scien-tist will once and for all have to renounceall thought of an objective time scalecommon to all observers, and of objectiveevents in time and space independent ofobservation on them . Perhaps recentdevelopments [1934] represent only apassing crisis. I tend to the opinion, forwhich there seems to be the strongest evi-dence, that this renunciation will be final . (23)

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In 1934 he also made this observation :

The hope that new experiments will yetlead us back to objective events in timeand space, or to absolute time, are aboutas well founded as the hope of discoveringthe end of the world somewhere in theunexplored regions of the Antarctic . (24)

Here is another 1934 evaluation :

. . . modern physics has purged classicalphysics of its arbitrary belief in its unlim-ited application. (25)

And from the same year :

. . . the edifice of exact science canhardly be looked upon as a consistent andcoherent unit in the naive way we hadhoped. (26)

One year later, in 1935, Heisenberg said this :

. . we must also become reconciled tothe idea that even the mathematically exactsections of physics represent, so to speak,only tentative efforts to find our way a-mong the wealth of phenomena . This willobviously apply to modern as well as clas-sical physics . For if certain ambiguitiesof the time concept have been remediedby relativity theory and certain ambiguitiesof the concept of matter by quantum theory,yet there can be no doubt that the futuredevelopment of science will force furtherrevisions and that the concepts used at pre-sent will also prove to be limited in theirapplication, but in a sense as yet unknown . (27)

And, finally, in 1941 :

Science no longer deals with the worldof direct experience but with a dark back-ground of this world brought to light byour experiments. But this means that, ina way, this objective world is a product ofour active intervention, and improvedtechniques of observation . Here, too,then, we are brought face to face with thelimitations of human understanding whichwe cannot overcome . (28)

Most of these statements were made in lecturesgiven in Germany during the thirties . The last wasgiven in Budapest in 1941 . This raises the fascinatingquestion of how one of the fathers of indeterminacyfared and could fare under the most absolute tyrannyyet achieved on earth . No doubt some future studentof the interface 'science-society' will examine thisissue from the point of view of Bronowski's Scienceand Human Values .

In 1940 Gaston Bachelard, very much concernedwith generalizing Heisenberg, made some tellingcomments :

. . an object statically localized byordinary intuition is wrongly specified .

. . . contemporary science wishes toknow phenomena and not things . It is inno way thing-conscious . A thing is mere-ly an arrested phenomenon .

. . . we must think of objects as beingessentially in movement and seek forthe conditions under which they can beconsidered to be at rest, as if fixed inintuitive space ; we must no longer con-ceive objects, as we used to do, asbeing naturally at rest -- as things usedto be -- and seek out the conditions whichpermit them to move . (29)

Or, as I have said in other contexts, "Notthingschanging, but change thinging . "

In his early Common Sense of Science, JacobBronowski also took Heisenberg out of the laboratory :

Heisenberg showed that every [Italicsmine: R. P . P . ] description of nature con-tains some essential and irremovableuncertainty . . . . We may have what meta-physical prejudice we choose, whetherthe future really and truly, essentially,is determined by the present . But thephysical fact about these small scaleevents is beyond dispute. Their futurecannot be foretold with complete assur-ance .by anyone observing them in thepresent. And of course, once we haveany uncertainty in prediction, in how-ever small and distant a corner of theworld, then the future is essentially un-certain -- although it may be overwhelm-ingly probable .

I have said that this principle of un-certainty refers to very small particlesand events. But these small events arenot by any means unimportant. Theyare just the sort of events which Lo onin the nervesand the brain and in thegiantmoleculeswhich determinethequalities we inherit . And sometimesthe odd small events add up to a fantasticlarge one . (30)

The sections in the above quoted passage whichI have italicized will be of concern later when wediscuss the brain as the ultimate measuring instru-ment and Bronowski's apparent 'retreat from uncer-tainty' in the years before his death in August, 1974 .

But in Common Sense of Science Bronowski was anenthusiastic 'uncertaintist' :

It was discovery, and it has had aprofound effect . But it does not seemnearly so strange or unsettling now . Onthe contrary, to my generation the prin-ciple of uncertainty seems the most na-tural and sensible remark in the world .It does not seem to us to have taken theorder out of science. It has taken outthe metaphysics and left what had longbeen forgotten, the scientific purpose .

In order to act, it is not necessaryto have a metaphysical belief that therules by which we are acting are univer-sal and that all other rules are just likethem. On the contrary, at bottom allgeneral beliefs of this kind are at oddswith the principles of science .

There simply is no sense in assertingwhat would happen if we knew the pres-ent completely . We do not, and plainlywe never can .

. . At bottom then, the principle of un-certainty states in special terms whatwas always known [sic! ], which is this .Science is a way of describing realities ;it is therefore limited by the limits ofobservation . Anything else is not sci-ence, it is scholastics . (31)

Brillouin is just as emphatic and more explicit :

We cannot abstract ourselves fromthe world. We form, together with it,an inseparable whole . There are noactors and spectators but a mixedcrowd . The modern scientist mustabsolutely renounce the idea of a realobjective world . What science does isto supply us with representative modelscapable of imitating regularities (orlaws) which we observe, and to enable usto reason about them. The models con-stitute the physical representation of theworld,, such as defined by Planck . Phy-sical models are as different from theworld as a geographical ma is fromthesurfaceofthe earth . (32)

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Shades of Korzybski!

The observer-observed continuum as a sourceof uncertainty is frankly faced :

Observation and perturbation inevita-bly go together, and the world around us isin perpetual flux, because we observe it .[Italics mine : R .P.P. ]

Professor Brillouin is not, of course, sayingthat the world is in flux o!Ay because we observe it,but that our observing activities constitute an addi-tional flux factor .

His most challenging statement is addressed tohis fellow scientists :

Statistics, probabilities, and averages-- these are all we know fromEinstein'srelations, and the situation is exactly si-milar for absorption and emission of ra-diation of any kind. . . .

It is necessary to emphasize thesefundamental facts because too many sci-entists still remain under the impressionthat all elementary laws should be simi-lar to those of classical mechanics thatare supposed to be strictly deterministic .This is not the case. Elementary physicallaws are all expressed by statistical for-mulas . No exact prediction is possible(at least for the present) and everything isirreversible!' (34)

Of the scientists I am quoting, Mendelssohn makesperhaps the most overt reference to general humanissues :

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle hasprofound consequences, not only in physicsbut quite generally in philosophical consi-derations involving the question of deter-minism and free will. Any statement deal-ing with the dimensions of h [Planck'sconstant] or less is merely metaphysicalspeculation and can never claim to havemeaning as far as individual events areconcerned.

The macroscopic laws of physics arefortunately saved by statistics since theyalways represent averages over largenumbers of these individual events . (35)

For some, awareness of the uncertainty principlewas like having the plug pulled from the tub beforethe bath is finished. As Mendelssohn observes," . ., the macroscopic laws of physics are fortunatelysaved by statistics ." This is important because itreminds us that 'uncertainty' does not 'mean' thatwe are scientifically 'free' to say anything we please,nor does it 'mean' that we are unable to specify withinlimits . The possibility of rigor remains . The needfor rigor remains. Marjorie Swanson made this cor-

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rective point very muscularly at an Institute of GeneralSemantics seminar in 1958 :

Modern physics has contributed two im-portant notions to present day philosophy --the relativity principle and the uncertaintyprinciple . Together, these two notionspretty well annihilate hope of ever finding'absolutes' of any kind testable by scientificmethods. However, they originated inthe midst of very rigorous systems ofreasoning and on the basis of very accu-rate measurements of various kinds ofevents . They do not offer excuses forcareless observation and sloppy reason-ing. (36)

This seems a necessary warning in the 'Age ofAquarius' when so many boulevard empiricists seemto think that because of the scientific community'sown recognition of its own limitations (and for otherreasons) 'anything goes' -- that, reversing the old'burden of proof' arguments, "If you can't prove thatsomething is not 'true', it's okay to assert that it istrue." For some, the 'release' from scientific deter-minism seems to have provided an impetus towardpseudo-scientific license .

What of Korzybski in all this? As already shownin the passages from Bachelard and Meyers, Korzyb-ski met uncertainty head on -- in, I can't resist sayingit, no uncertain terms . More rigorously and vigor-ously than most others, he saw and accepted the broadimplications of Heisenbergian uncertainty for the gen-eral community of humans, not just the scientificminority. In my view, Korzybski not only saw theseimplications more clearly than Heisenberg himselfbut, continuing our psycho-historical emphasis,accepted uncertainty more courageously and thor-oughgoingly than did Heisenberg .

Korzybski's major explicit published reactionsto the uncertainty principle (formulated in 1925 anddebated, as we have seen, in 1927 while Korzybskiwas working on the first draft of his magnum o usappeared in Science and Sanity (1933) . First of all,and this seems necessitated by the still heard criti-cism that Korzybski failed to give due recognition tohis partners in formulation, Heisenberg is one ofthose to whom Science and Sanity is dedicated. Speci-fically, the dedication is to the works of those listed" . . . which have greatly influenced my enquiry . . . "

Throughout Science and Sanity Korzybski usespassages from Heisenbergto introduce sections of hisbook and as chapter heads . (37) What most concernsus here is his semantic reaction to the Heisenbergianstimulus. Korzybski distinguished two kinds of un-certainty: Heisenbergian (restricted) and Korzybskian(general) . Here are some sample quotations that showKorzybski formulating the 'restricted' character ofHeisenberg's principle :

It was found that the 'absolute' divisionof the 'observer' and the 'observed' wasfalse to facts, because every observationin this field disturbs the observed . Theelimination of this elementalism in thequantum field led to the most revolution-ary restricted 'uncertainty principle' ofHeisenberg, which, without abolishingdeterminism, requires the transformingof the two-valued A 'logic' into theOo-valued semantics of probability . (38)

Having discussed the human nervous system asan "abstracting, integrating mechanism, " (a pointwe shall return to) Korzybski again refers to Heisen-berg :

Under such conditions, the restricted'uncertainty principle' of Heisenberg be-comes a structural, most revolutionaryand creative general principle . . . [Of whichmore below : R. P . P . ] (39)

And finally :

Heisenberg's restricted principle ofuncertainty is also the result of the appli-cation of non-elementalism, based onthe observation that the 'observer' andthe 'observed' cannot be sharply divided . (40)

But Korzybski is most concerned to state hisgeneralization of uncertainty, related to but con-sciously more broadly applied than Heisenberg's .As we will see, part of Korzybski's genius lay pre-cisely in his ability to generalize from quantumphysics to the symbolizing nervous system and backagain.

Because the nervous system is anabstracting, integrating mechanism, allhuman psycho-neurological reactions and,particularly, psycho-logical, to be si-milar in structure, must be based on themathematical theoriesof statistics andprobability. On the objective level wedeal with absolute individuals, and so allstatements or higher order abstractions,can only be probable . Historically, mathe-maticians have elaborated not only boththeories, but Boole, in his Laws ofThought, extended the mathematical ap-proach to 'logic' in connection with thetheory of probability. Finally, thedifficulties of the law of excluded thirdhave been solved by -ukasiewicz andTarski in their 'many valued logic'which, when N increases indefinitely,merges with the mathematical theory ofprobability, a result reached indepen-dently by a different type of analysisin the present system . Any possible fu-

ture scientific A, non-el 'logic', which Icall general semantics, must be built onthis structurally more correct formulation . . . .

Under such conditions, the restricted'uncertainty principle' of Heisenberg be-comes a . . . general principle,, . . (41)

The 'strictly linguistic' point is emphasized inthis passage relating to the 'laws of thought' ofAristotle

. the 'law of identity' is never ap-plicable to processes . The 'law of ex-cluded third', as it is sometimes called,which gives the two-valued character toA 'logic', establishes, as a general prin-ciple, what represents only a limitingcase and so, as a general principle, mustbe unsatisfactory . As on the objective,un-speakable levels, we deal exclusivelywith absolute individuals and individualsituations, in the sense that they are notidentical, all statements which, by neces-sity, represent higher order abstractionsmust only represent

rodbable statements.

Thus, we are led to oa -valued semanticsof probability, which introduces an inher-ent and general principle of uncertainty . (42)

Korzybski clearly recognized the relationshipbetween Heisenbergian uncertainty and his own non-identity formulations :

The present A-system was formulatedin a way independent of other systems,as it was the direct result of structuralsemantic researches free from identifica-tion. This led to the formulation of funda-mental egeneral principles which underlieall human 'knowledge', such as non-identi-ty, requiring the recognition of structureas the only possible content of 'knowledge'and so leading to the formulation of 'simi-larity of structure' ; non-elementalism asa general principle ; the general principleof uncertainty ; aw -valued general seman-tics . . . It is naturally very reassuring tofind that the newest most important a-chievements of science have followedthese principles unconsciously and haveapplied them before they were explicitlyformulated. (43)

Some may dispute that last assertion as it mightapply to individual scientists working on particularproblems (as a system claim, Korzybski's statementseems justified to me); but that will not detain us here .

Korzybski explicitly relegates Heisenberg'sprinciple to the status of a 'special case' in two cru-cial passages :

This principle becomes a particularinstance of the general principle of un-certainty, . . . (44)

. . . any positive statement about theobjective levels must be only probable indifferent degrees, which introduces afundamental and entirely general A prin-ciple of uncertainty . Heisenberg's re-stricted principle in physics appearsonly as a special case . . . . the oldertwo-valued determinism must be re-formulated into the 40 -valued deter-minism of the maximum probability. (45)

This last statement states again Korzybski's(perhaps) most scientifically significant formulationabout language : the formulation that all statementsare .only probable. A full examination of this issueis beyond the scope of this paper, but it is relevantto the applied epistemological level and the psycho-historical aspects that we have been examining, soI will say a few words about it .

We have already seen that many scientists,philosophers, etc ., were disturbed by the uncertaintyprinciple . Many looked to the then emerging three-(or multi-) valued logics as a linguistic prophylacticfor uncertainty, especially since, at least in thecase of . ukasiewicz, commitment to indeterminacyhad preceded Heisenberg's 1925-1927 formulations .(Zukasiewicz's first paper on indeterminacy, whichspawned his three-valued logic, was published in1906) :

xukasiewicz . . . claimed that theuniversally accepted conviction thatnature is governed by causal necessitywas 'only a premature and unscientificformulation of the data of experience' .The indeterministic conviction sostrongly expressed in this essay resultedperhaps from his scrutiny of the conceptof cause. But it is equally feasible thathis indeterministic outlook preceded theessay and gave rise to it. He defendedhis conviction with unswerving determina-tion for the rest of his life . . . . the ori-gin of the three-valued logic was in away a by-product of his defence . (46)

Skolimowski (quoted above) further observesthat :

The philosophical significance of amany-valued logic was assessed differ-ently by different people . hukasiewiczhimself thought that his creation wascomparable with the creation of non-Euclidean geometries. Some people,notably Reichenbach, saw in it a solu-tion to difficulties in which modern

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physics found itself after Heisenbergstated the principle of uncertainty. (47)

Oliver Reiser, in a book which scientific epis-temologists 'should' read with admiring care in spiteof its mystical inclinations, makes a similar pointand brings us back to Korzybski :

Not only has this situation given riseto much philosophical argument ; evenlogic has been scrutinized to see if itoffers a way out of the puzzle . Forexample, Hans Reichenbach has soughtto interpret quantum mechanics interms of a polyvalent logic, a probabilitylogic with a continuous scale of valueshaving 'truth and falsity' as limitingextremes . Those interested in keepingthe record straight may wish to recallthat Korzybski and the present writer(among others) have also explored thepossibilities along this line . On the otherhand, Bertrand Russell, Ernest Nagel,William Werkmeister, and HenryMargenau (to mention several) haverejected the attempts at interpretingquantum mechanics and the wave-parti-cle dilemma in terms of a multi-valuedor non-Aristotelian logic. (48)

Korzybski, who was greatly influenced by thepre-World War I and interwar school of Polish logi-cians and mathematicians, had a characteristicresponse: a polite bow of recognition followed by aninsistence that we must go further :

The Polish school of mathematicianshas produced the extension of the tradi-tional two-valued A 'logic' to three- andmany-valued 'logic' ; Chwistek has baseda new foundation of mathematics and anew theory of aggregates on his seman-tic methods ; but even these writersdisregarded the general problems of non-elementalism, non-identity, and thenecessity for a full-fledged A-systembefore their formulations can becomefree from paradoxes, valid, and appliedto life . (49)

Indeed, a careful reading of Skolimowski'sdissertation and of such primary collections as &u-kasiewicz's Selected Works (50) lead me to questionwhether Polish logic is non-Aristotelian at all . Sure-ly, not in Korzybski's sense : " . . . all statementsare only probable in different degrees, " which Iunderstand as saying that all statements are, mostdeeply, propositional functions, even those whichare most explicit with all 'variables' 'fixed' .

I accept the absolute individualityof events on the unspeakable objective

levels, which necessitates the conclu-sion that all statements about them areonly probable in varibus degrees, in-troducing a general principle of uncer-tainty in all statements . (51)

We return now to our central theme . Korzyb-ski's over-all evaluation of Heisenberg's work ismost thoroughly presented in the last chapter ofScience and Sanity proper. Only a few additionalstatementsfrom those pages need be noted here :

The Heisenberg theory is alsocharacterized by its thoroughly be-havioristic, actional, functional andoperational character . The numberof unjustified assumptions is the low-est in existence and most of the identi-fications are eliminated . Accordingto Heisenberg, electrons and atoms donot have the 'same' kind of 'reality'as ordinary objects of lower order ab-stractions. This conclusion, whichunderlies his whole work, is of parti-cular importance structurally . (52)

Because of its structure, the Heisen-berg theory is a very fundamental oneand there is little doubt that Heisenbergmethods will be elaborated further andwill be kept as a permanent checkinmethod in physics. (53)

There remains but to mention somemore characteristics of the Heisenbergtheory which seem to have very far-reaching structural and semantic bear-ings. This theory appears frankly statis-tical and introduces fundamental proba-bility assumptions. The moment werealize that the human organism is es-sentially an abstracting affair and thatabstracting is performed on differentlevels, or in different orders, it be-comes obvious that statistical methodsand probability notions become funda-mental. (54)

Why was Korzybski so receptive to Heisenbergand so ready to go beyond (particularly as involvesneural functions, as we shall shortly see) 7 Partly,I think, because he was already intuitively (Manhoodof Humanity, 1921) and analytically (Time-Binding :The General Theory, 1924-1926) committed to un-certainty. In both works just mentioned he had al-ready achieved implicitly and explicitly his centralformulation of non-identity. Partlybecause (especially)his willingness to carry uncertainty into the subtlestelectro-chemical 'firings' in the human brain and tothe grandest probabilities-possibilities on the cosmicorder) of that uncertain characteristic mentioned inthe title of this paper : courage . Formulational

nerve . Epistemological guts. Whether or not (assome have suggested) this was partly traceable tohis Polish heritage (a fascinating paper lies waitingthere!), I won't say . That he 'had' courage, therecan be no doubt .

This is not a priority-establishing paper, butI would like to quote a few striking passages from theTime-Binding papers of the mid-twenties . Theseclearly demonstrate that Korzybski had already madethe psycho-logical commitment to general uncertainty(non-identity of orders of abstraction) which were tobe worked out explicitly and in great detail in Scienceand Sanity .

The first Time-Binding paper, delivered inabstract before the International Mathematical Con-gress, August, 1924 in Toronto, was characterizedas ". . . a summary of a larger work on Human Engi-neering . . . " i .e., Science and Sanity . Here is theopening 'gun'. (laser?) of that paper :

All human knowledge is conditionedand limited, at present, by the proper-ties of light and human symbolism . (55)'

(Similar comments linking physics and linguistic issues were later made by Heisenberg in the twen-ties [quoted by Korzybski in Science and Sa_ nity] andthirties . (56) Discussion of those is beyondthe scopeof this paper .)

Korzybski further noted in 1924 :

The theory of relativity has estab-lished another fact, that all we knowand may know is a "joint phenomenon"of the observer and the observed . (57)

Man to be a man and think as a manmust be a relativist, which is an inevi-table consequence of the application ofcorrect symbolism to facts. He knowsthat he does not know, but may knowindefinitely more . . . (58)

Gross empiricism is a delusion andhe who professes it as a creed is probablymore mistaken than the old metaphysi-cians were . (59)

We see that, as the structure of theatom is reflected in a grandiose mannerin the structure of the universe, so isthe structure of the knowledge of theindividual man reflected in the collectiveknowledge of mankind. (60)

The second paper, delivered first before theWashington Society for Nervous and Mental Diseasesin June 1925 and then to the Washington Psychopatho-logical Society, has similar explicit adumbrations and

some quite conscious expressions of the 'nerve' issue .Having discussed Russell's 'theory of types' with re-lation to his own formulation of orders of abstractionas shown on the 'Anthropometer' ('Structural Differ-ential'), Korzybski observes :

Although Russell's theory and myown are strikingly similar, they are notat all the same thing ; one works outsideof mathematics [Korzybski's], where theother does not. It would be extremelyinteresting and instructive to inquire asto what extent Principia Mathematicaitself pays tribute to Aristotle. Thisimportant problem looms in the fore-ground the moment we have the pluckto face non-aristotelianism can_ didly .(61) [Italics mine : R. P . P . ]

. . . all human life is a permanentdance between different orders of ab-stractions. (62)

Psychologically Einstein made up hismind to talk sense or stop talking. Hedecided to see the world anew . He hadto abstract himself to a very high orderand free himself as much as possiblefrom preconceived ideas, which arealways implied by the accepted form ofrepresentation . He decided to see factsand label them anew . Helped by mathe-matical method and symbolism he succeed-ed . This involved a thorough-going be-haviouristic attitude. But it was a newbehaviourism in which the role of theobserver is not disregarded. (63)

. all human knowledge is postula-ttonal in structure . . . (64)

As we have seen, Korzybski may be giving Ein-stein too much credit here, but his own commitmentto transactional indeterminacy is clearly indicated .

I have already made several references toneurological issues as they apply to the Korzybskiangeneralization of uncertainty . Korzybski very earlyin his writing career (begun only in his middle years)recognized that the human brain itself is the ultimatemeasuring instrument; that no amount of 'extendingthe nervous system' by use of instruments would allowus to avoid this 'base line' responsibility ; it is wewho abstract. Since those pioneering times, fromWorld War I through the frantic inter-war 'peace'period to and through World War II, we have learnedmuch more about human brain function than Korzybskicould know. We can only wonder at his prescience :his specifically neurological formulations (relatingspecifically to the process of abstracting, orders ofabstraction, etc.) have 'become' increasingly de. scrip-tive of the best, most recent information we have .

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Given the length of this paper, one supporting example(legions could be cited) must suffice .

In January, 1974, I attended a lecture at theJohns Hopkins University Medical School in my nativecity. The lecture was given by Doctor Vernon B .Mountcastle, chief of neurological research for theHopkins Hospital-University complex . Dr. Mount-castle's lecture, delivered to keep the Hopkins medi-cal community 'up to date' re brain research, wastitled "The View From Within" . As I listened to thefirst part of his lecture (perhaps the first fifteenminutes) I was pleasantly shaken to my non-Aristote-lian foundations -- I could even allow myself the fan-tasy that Dr . Mountcastle spoke in a deep bass witha rich, 'r'-rolling Polish accent!

He made such points as : 'reality' as illusion ;brain as only 'link' to 'reality' ; sensation as abstrac-tion; sensation as set by encoding function of ner-vous system; perception as selection ; perception astransformation (i.e ., transducing of energy forms,e.g., light transmission, approximately 186, 000miles per second, as opposed to neural, electro-chemical transmission at approximate maximums ofof 225 miles per hour) ; he suggested perception asdistinct from sensation ; he suggested that isomor-ph ism (similarity of representational structure) be-tween brain event and non-brain event "looks to bethe best we can hope for, " etc .

Dr. Mountcastle described the fundamentalsteps in the process of abstracting : structurally-determined selecting, transducing, integrating, pro-jecting (all non-verbal) . The general semanticistwould merely add 'talking' (i .e., naming, describing,inferring, hypothesizing, theorizing, etc., ete .) . (65)

Dr. Mountcastle's lecture proceeded to des-criptions of precise measurements involving compari-sons of human with monkey brains, etc ., discussionof conclusions to be reached re correlations betweenbrain damage and behavior (much in the manner ofA. R. Luria (66)), finally reaching a very musicalcrescendo with observations that seemed to depresshim and some of his audience but which l, as an al-ready 'committed' 'uncertaintist' found exhilarating:

The brain is a prisonall we ever know 'directly' about the 'out-side world' is the result of sensory stimu-li which have been transduced at peri-pheral levelsthere is some 'commonality' at peripherallevels: "beyond that, we are all uniquelyprivate . "

From the point of view of this neurologist,general (Korzybskian) uncertainty would appear to benot a theoretical probability but a behavioral certainty!Please note : cep is a multiordinal term ; beingcertain about un-certainty leads to markedly different

conclusions-behaviors than being certain about cer-tainty .

We have already seen an awareness of thisproblem in neuro-physics (which includes neuro-elec-tro-chemistry as a sub-set) expressed by Bronowskiabove. This awareness is now becoming commonproperty (even allowing for such disputes as that'raging' around such formulations as the biochemicalbasis of 'schizophrenia') . The information theoreti-cian Jagjit Singh states the problem well :

. there is a kind of indeterminacy,which though quite different in essence[sic] from the famous principle of Hei-senberg, is just as effective a barrierto our understanding of the living brain .The indeterminacy arises from the fact . . . .that the more "micro" our neurologicalprobe the less "macro" is our comprehen-sion of the working of the cerebral cor-tex as a whole. (67)

Singh makes an explicit, Korzybskian neuro-linguistic point (in his case following Fournie) thatthe "surmise that human speech is a window on theworking of the cerebral cortex may well be truer thanwe suspect at present ." (1966) As part of this emerg-ing neuro-semantic, neuro-linguistic 'wave', I toomade a similar speculation in 1968 :

Korzybski's reaction to having inter-nalized the mathematical notion of func-tion may be suggested in this way :

If language is a function of brain,then by studying language, we can learnsomething about brain-function. Appar-ently, as brain varies (evolution), sodoes language vary : L=f(B) ; as languagevaries (culture), so does brain vary :B=g(L) . (68)

What I want to stress here is the difficultiesinvolved in such speculations related to research andformulating activities .

We have noted Mendelssohn's extrapolation ofindeterminism to such 'philosophical' problems as'determinism' and 'free will' . In a book on philoso-phy which is notable for its paucity of references toHeisenberg (not to mention Korzybski), D . M. MacKaymakes this important but curiously innocent-sounding'admission' :

We are gradually accumulating evi-dence which suggests that brain tissuedoes behave according to the same phy-sical principles as the rest of the body ;and we now know also that no behavior-pattern which we can observe and specifyis beyond the capabilities of a physical

mechanism. On the other hand, it isundeniable that some processes in thebrain might occasionally [! ] be affectedby physically indeterminate events ofthe sort which Heisenberg's principleallows . (69)

A kind of 'reverse uncertainty', wherein brainlesions do not lead to the sort of dysfunction we mightexpect, is pointed out in Edgar Miller's ClinicalNeuropsychology . (70)

The foregoing may make it easier for us toappreciate Korzybski's sharpest expression of gener-alized uncertainty: "Whatever you say something is,it is not . " The denial of identity, the assertion ofnon-identity (of orders of abstraction) grow out ofKorzybski's concomitant awareness of 'absolute indi-viduals' as functions of a continuum -- with the hu-man brain, the inventor-discoverer of the 'laws' ofphysics, at its 'center' .

Bachelard was very aware of Korzybski'sneuro-implications :

For Korzybski, the linkage ofthought events is equivalent to a link-age of cerebral functions; to free one-self from certain habits of thinking isto break with cerebral determinism . (71)

We may here, following Brillouin's earlierquoted suggestion about the effect of information on'entropy', regard Korzybski as a 'hero of negentropy' .

Running through most of the many passagesquoted in this paper (with the notable exceptions ofBachelard, Brillouin and Korzybski), I detect a toneof fear-tinged regret, a deep underlying yearning forcertainty (or whatever we can salvage of it) in theface of a grudgingly accepted but not internalized un-certainty. That continuing (culturally determined?)'need' for certainty, rather than the uncertainty for-mulations themselves, have, it seems to me, keptrestricted and general uncertainty subjects of contro-versy. The formulations seem incontrovertible ; thesemantic reactions they trigger seem all the moreintense and uncomfortable .

One way 'around' generalized uncertainty(which does not say that we cannot have relatively se-cure measurements at a time T) may be to give spe-cial emphasis to formulations of invariance . HenryMargenau's 1971 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture,"Invariance as a Criterion of Reality, "states the casewell, although he seems insufficiently sensitive to theneed for the modifier relative and runs afoul ofBrillouin regarding the 'reversibility of time' (a for-mulation apparently very dear to closet absolutists) .(72)

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Among those whose views we have been exam-ining, Bronowski seems to have made the most expli-cit 'retreat' from uncertainty . In the chapter 'Know-ledge or Certainty' from his The Ascent of Man, heeven proposes re-naming and tosome degreere-for-mulating the Principle of Uncertainty :

Yet the Principle of Uncertaintyis a bad name. In science or outsideit, we are not uncertain ; our know-ledge is merely confined within a cer-tain tolerance . We should call it thePrinciple of Tolerance. (73)

Bronowski goes on to use the word 'tolerance'in its engineering and social senses :

All knowledge, all information be-tween human beings, can be exchangedonly within a play of tolerance . (74)

Even though Bronowski points out that certaintyas used by Heisenberg implies "zero tolerance" andthat "What makes the principle profound is that Hei-senberg specifies the tolerance that can be reached."(75) The shift from uncertainty to tolerance appearsto me to be a dangerous hedge . The very socialtolerance which Bronowski so passionately yearnedfor may be on-goingly threatened if we constantlyinsist on the 'relative certainties' (invariances) thatwe 'have' 'within limits' . As a formulation of psy-cho-logics, tolerance (restricted Heisenbergian andBronowskian) must be seen as a special case, a sub-set, an outgrowth of Korzybskian (general) uncertain-ty; a behavior deriving from an internalized formula-tional commitment .

Perhaps we require more consciously explicitsemantic reactions to Korzybski's formulation ofnon-identity . Surely in the literature labeled 'gener-al semantics' this formulation is often under-present-ed and under-understood. Korzybski is usually saidto have formulated 'identity' as "absolute samenessin all aspects . . . " and rightly so :

. . it must be stated that 'identity',defined as 'absolute sameness' necessi-tates 'absolute sameness' in 'all' aspects,never to be found in the world,nor inour heads. Anything with which we dealon the objective [non-verbal] levels re-presents a process, different all the'time', no matter how slow or fast theprocess might be ; therefore, a principleor a premise that 'everything is identicalwith itself' is invariably false to facts . (76)

But what Korzybski seems saying here (and inmyriad similar statements) through his emphasizingthe non-verbal, non-linguistic process ('objective')

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levels, is that 'identity', neuro-physiologically andneuro-linguistically, not only is "false to facts" ifit asserts or implies "absolute sameness in all as-pects, " but that 'identity' is false to facts if it formu-lates absolute sameness in

aspect. All 'same-nesses' are merely formulational -- sometimesrestrictedly useful but "invariably false to facts ."

Here seems the kernel of Korzybskian uncer-tainty. Any attempt to 'pacify' those for whom itmay seem too brisk (we may picture the 'epistemo-logist who came in from the cold') may very welllead us to experience the historically familiar confu-sion of science and metaphysics and suffer again thevery intolerance Bronowski so abhorred :

The Principle of Uncertainty or, inmy phrase, the Principle of Tolerancefixed once for all the realisation thatall knowledge is limited. It is an ironyof history that at the very time when thiswas being worked out there should rise,under Hitler in Germany and othertyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception :a principle of monstrous certainty . (77)

I owe it as a human being to the manymembers of my family who died at Ausch-witz, to stand . . . as a survivor and a wit-ness. We have to cure ourselves of theitch for absolute knowledge and power. (78)

Less movingly expressed, may I suggest thatwe need the courage to recognize with Korzybski thatmost of our science-life problems seem to arise notfrom uncertainty but from mistaken certainty wronglyapplied. R. L. Gregory's cosmic caveat can serve asa reminder of the rigorous modesty we need as crucialequipment as we search out the future :

We are being cut off from the biologi-cal past which moulded the eyes and thebrains and the speech of our ancestors .The Intelligent Eye is for the first timeconfronted with an essentially unpredicta-ble future, where present object hypothesesare bound to fail . As we create so we mustadapt to what we have created ; the dangeris that we may create a world beyond therestraints of our intelligence : a world wecannot see . (79)

Abstract

More deeply and broadly than Heisenberg, Kor-zybski formulated and accepted 'uncertainty' as afunction of the abstracting process . This paper exam-ines various historical reactions to Heisenberg's re-stricted uncertainty principle and Korzybskias formu-lation of general uncertainty. Recent researches,particularly in neurology, are shown to be supportiveof Korzybskian uncertainty.

REFERENCES

1. Bachelard, Gaston . The Philosophy of No.(Translated by G. C. Waterson). New York :Orion Press, 1968, p. 108 .

2 . Meyers, Russell. "Preface" to the 4th Edition(1958), Alfred Korzybski . Science and Sanity,pp. xi-xii .

3 . Mendelssohn, Kurt . Theguest for AbsoluteZero : The Meaning of Low Temperature Phy-sics . New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966, p. 137 .The entire Chapter 7, "Indeterminacy, " pp. 136-160 is pertinent for this discussion .

4 . Ibid., p. 147 .

5 . Hoffman, Banesh and Helen Dukas (collabora-tor) . Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel. 1972 .New York: Viking Press, p . 187.

6. Ibid., p. 190.

7 . Ibid., p. 193 .

8 . Ibid., p. 193 .

9 . Brillouin, Leon . Scientific Uncertainty, andInformation . New York: Academic Press,1964 (Second Printing, 1966), pp . 20-21 .

10 . Ibid., p. 21 .

11 . Ibid., Ch. TV, "Imagination and Invention in aTheory", pp. 39-45 .

12. Mendelssohn, oL. cit., p. 244.

13 . See especially Edgar Miller, Clinical Neuro-psycholo~r, Ch. 6, pp . 115-123 .

14 . Bronowski, Jacob . The Common Sense ofScience . New York: Vintage Books, n.d. ,p. 70 .

15 . Brillouin, off. cit. , p. 52. For a recent appli-cation of the 'model'-'reality' problem to elec-tronics, see David Slepian . "On Bandwidth" .Proceedings of the IEEE . Vol . 64, No . 3,March, 1976,pp. 292-294 .

16. Reiser, Oliver L. The Integration of HumanKnowledge . Boston:Porter Sargent, 1958,pp. 282-283 .

17 . Heisenberg, Werner . Philosophic Problemsof Nuclear Science (1952). New York: FawcettWorld Library, 1966, p . 28 .

18 . Ibid., p. 43 .

19 . Brillouin, S. cit., p. 53.

23

20 . Bachelard, 22. cit., p. 96 . 46, Skolimowski, Henryk. Polish Analytical Philo-

21 . Heisenberg, op. cit., p. 13 .sophy. New York: Humanities Press, 1967,p. 59 .

22 . Brillouin, o_p. cit., pp. 19-20 . 47 . Ibid., p. 64 .

23 . Heisenberg, oo . Sit., pp. 17-18 . 48 . Reiser, 2p. cit., p. 302 .

24 . Ibid., p . 19 . 49. Korzybski, off. cit., p. 541 .

25 . Ibid., p. 24 . 50 . Zukasiewicz, Jan . Selected Works. Amster-

26. Ibid . , p. 27 .dam : North Holland Publishing Co . andWarszawa: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970,pass

27 . Ibid., p . 48 .51 . Korzybski, op. cit., p. 93 .

28. Ibid., p. 79 .52 . Ibid., p. 715 .

29. Bachelard, oj,. cit., p. 94 .53 . Ibid., p. 715 .

30 . Bronowski, op. cit., pp . 69-70 .54 . Ibid., pp. 715-16 .

31 . Ibid., pp. 70-72 .55 . Korzybski, Alfred . Time-Binding : The Gener-

32 . Brillouin, 22. cit., p. 52 . al The. Two Papers, 1924-1926 .. Lakeville,

33. Ibid., p. 52 .Ct . : Institute of General Semantics, 1949 .Paper I, p. 5 .

34 . Ibid., p. 73 . 56 . See Heisenberg, op. cit., pp. 47, 49 and 75 andKorzybski, Science and Sanity, pp . 426, 563

35 . Mendelssohn, 22. cit., p. 141 . and 698 .

36 . Swanson, Marjorie A. Scientific Epistemologic 57. Korzybski, Time- Binding, I, oy. cit . , p. 7 .Backgrounds of General Semantics . Lakeville,Ct, : Instituteof General Semantics, 1959, p . 61 . 58 . Ibid., p. 15 .

37 . Korzybski, Alfred . Science and Sanity: An In- 59 . Ibid . , p. 17 .troduction to Non-AristotelianSystems ancTGeneral Semantics . Lakeville, Ct, : Interna- 60. Ibid., p. 22.tional Non-Aristotelian Library PublishingCompany, 1933, 4th Ed., 1958, pp . 99, 214, 61, Korzybski, Time-Bindin_g, IT, p . 8 .223, 426, 563 and. 698 .

62 . Ibid., p. 19 .38. Ibid., p. 107 .

63. Ibid., p. 27.39. Ibid., p. 310 .

64 . Ibid., p. 22 .40. Ibid., p. 541 .

65 . I wish to stress that these remarks are based41. Ibid., p. 310 . on notes I took at Dr. Mountcastle's lecture .

The factor of y own abstracting must there-42 . Ibid., p. 405. fore be kept in the foreground . I may have

43 . Ibid., pp. 540-41 .'heard' only what seemed supportive of Korzyb-skian formulations, Nevertheless, to the ex-

44 . Ibid., p. 541.tent that I have 'quoted' Dr . Mountcastle,explicitly or by implication, I believe theimport of his remarks as transmitted here to

45 . Ibid., p. 760 . Actually, this quotation, included be accurate .in "Supplement III" of Science and Sanity, isfrom a paper delivered in 1931 before the Ameri- 66 . Luria, A . R. Higher Cortical. Functions incan Mathematical Society . Man. London: Tavistock, 166, passim.

24

67 . Singh, Jagjit . Great Ideas in InformationTheory, Language and Cybernetics . New York :Dover Publications,Inc., 1966, p. 331 .

68 . Pula, Robert P . "Neglected Formulations :Function and Multiordinality" in Lee Thayer,ed., Communication: General SemanticsPerspectives . New York: Spartan-Mac-millan, 1970, p . 47 .

69 . MacKay, D . M. "Brain and Will" in Paul Ed-wards and Arthur Pap (eds .) A Modern Intro-duction to Philosophy. New York : The FreePress-Macmillan, 1965, p . 39 .

70 . Miller, Edgar. Clinical Neuropsychology.Baltimore, Md . : Penguin Books, 1972, passim .For an excellent, markedly interdisciplinarybibliography variously used, see Jack Pincher .Human Intelligence . New York: G, P. PutnamIsSons, 1976 .

71 . Bachelard, 92. cit., p. 109 .

72 . Margenau, Henry . "Invariance as a Criterionof Reality" in General Semantics Bulletin Nos .38-39-40. Lakeville, Ct . : Institute of GeneralSemantics, 1976, pp . 13-25, especially p . 17 .For Brillouin's views compare Chapter VI,"The Arrow of Time" in Scientific Uncertainty,and Information, 22. cit., pp. 58-68. The'invariance' issue is discussed perhaps mostsuccessfully by Korzybski in Chapter XIX ofScience and Sanity, "Mathematics and the Ner-vous System ." pp . 268-311 .

73 . Bronowski, J . The Ascent of Man. Boston:Little, Brown and o., 1973, p. 365. Deliver-ed as part of a well-received television broad-cast in England and then (1975) the United States,this essay first appeared as "The Principle ofTolerance" in The Atlantic Monthly. Vol . 232,No. 6, December, 1973, pp . 60-66 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bachelard, Gaston . The Philosophy of No. (Trans-lated by G. C . Waterson) . New York: OrionPress, 1968 .

Brillouin, Leon. Scientific Uncertainty, and Informa-tion . New York: Academic Press, 1964 .

Bronowski, Jacob . The Ascent of Man. Boston: Little,Brown and Co ., 1973 .

Bronowski, Jacob . The Common Sense of Science .New York: Vintage Books, n.d .

Bronowski, Jacob . Science and Human Values . NewYork: Harper Brothers, 1956 .

Pincher, Jack. Human Intelligence . New York:G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976 .

Gregory, R . L. The Intelligent Eye. New York:McGraw-Hill, 1970.

Heisenberg, Werner . Phil osophic Problems in Nu-clear Science . New York: Fawcett World Li-brary, 1966 .

Hoffman, Banesh, and Helen Dukas (collaborator) .Albert Einstein : Creator and Rebel . New York :The Viking Press, 1972 .

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Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity : An Introductionto Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Seman-tics . 1933. Lakeville, Ct . : International Non-Aristotelian Publishing Co ., 4th Edition, 1958 .

Korzybski, Alfred. Time -Binding : The General. Theory .Two Papers, 1924-1926 . Lakeville, Ct . : nstituteof General Semantics, 1949 .

74 . Ibid., p. 365.iukasiewicz, Jan, (L. Borkowski, ed.) Selected Works .

75 . Ibid.,_p. 365 . (Translated by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz and others) .Amsterdam : North Holland Publishing Co . and

76 . Korzybski, Science and Sanity, q L. cit., p. 194 . Warszawa: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970 .

77 . Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, op . cit., p. 367 . Luria, A. R . Higher Cortical Functions in Man.London: Tavistock, 1966 .

78 . Ibid., p. 374 .MacKay, D. M. "Brain and Will" in Paul Edwards and

79 . Gregory, R. L. The Intelligent Eye-, New York- Arthur Pap (eds .) A Modern Introduction toMcGraw-Hill, 16'7-0,'p . 166 . Philosophy. New York: The Free Press-

-Mac-millan, 1965 .

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Mendelssohn, Kurt. The Quest for Absolute Zero :The Meaning of Low Temperature Physics,New York: McGraw-Hill (World UniversityLibrary), 1966 .

Meyers, Russell. "Preface" to Korzybski, Scienceand Sa, nity, 4th Edition, 1958.

Miller, Edgar. Clinical Neuropsychology . Baltimore,Md. : Penguin Books, 1972.

Mountcastle, Vernon B. Lecture, The View fromWithin (from notes by R . P. Pula). Deliveredbefore the Johns Hopkins Medical Community,Baltimore, Md., 1974 .

Pula, Robert P . "Neglected Formulations : Functionand Multiordinality" in Lee Thayer (ed .) Commu-nication : General Semantics Perspectives . NewYork: Spartan-Macmillan, 1970 .

Reprinted from Methodology and Science, Vol, 10-2-1977 . Haarlem, The Netherlands .

BIOGRAPHY

Robert Pula has been on the teaching staff ofthe Institute since 1967 . In recent years he has beenresponsible for giving the main theoretical formula-tions at the annual summer seminar-workshops . Heis currently conducting a series of weekend seminarsaround the country (New York, San Francisco, At-lanta, San Diego, Nashville [Vanderbilt University]) .

A graduate of Loyola College in Baltimore(B. S . S . Se . , 1958), he has done graduate work inEnglish and education at the University of Marylandand Johns Hopkins .

Mr . Pula works as a communication consultantin the Baltimore area . He conducts workshops forthe staffs of various hospitals, teaches at Fort Meadeand Anne Arundel Community College, conducts work-shops in industrial communications, and works withsmall groups of disabled veterans on problems ofcommunications . All of his professional activitiesare based explicitly or implicitly on general seman-tics .

Reiser, Oliver L . The Integration of Human_ Know-ledge. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1958 .

Singh, Jagjit . Great Ideas in Information Theory,Language and Cybernetics . New York : DoverPublications, Inc ., 1966,

Skolimowski, Henryk. Polish Analytical Philosophy.New York: Humanities Press, 1967 .

Slepian, David . "On Bandwidth" in Proceedings ofthe IEEE, Vol. 64, No. 3, March, 1976,pp. 292-94. Originally given as the secondShannon Lecture at the International Sympo-sium on Information Theory, Notre DameUniversity (Indiana), October 31, 1974 .

Swanson, Marjorie A. Scientific EpistemologicBackgrounds of General Semantics . Lakeville,Ct. : Institute of General Semantics, 1959 .

Among his publications in general semanticsare : "Neglected Formulations : Function and Multi-ordinality, " in Communication : General SemanticsPerspectives, Spartan-Macmillan, 1970 ; "GeneralSemantics . as a General System Which Explicitly In-cludes the System-Maker," in Coping With IncreasingComplexity : Implications of General Semantics andGeneral Systems Theory, Gordon and Breach SciencePublishers, 1974 ; "Extensional Devices in Release ofCreativity" in General Semantics Bulletin, Nos . 41-42-43, 1977 ; "Identification : The Illusion-DelusionBuilder" in General Semantics Bulletin, Nos . 44-45,1978; and, in the same Bulletin (44-45) an extendedreview of Stephen Rose's important book, The Con-scious Brain .

Mr. Pula has been editor of the General Seman-tics Bulletin since August 1977 .