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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a great intro to general semantics,
By Carlos (El Centro) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies in General Semantics (Paperback)
How does one review and "objectively" critique-with language-a book about the nature and the limitations of language? If you've ever heard the phrase, "the map is not the territory" you will understand and appreciate and possibly even "feel" its deeper meaning by the time you have finished reading this book. True, as another reviewer stated, _Levels_ is not a primer of General Semantics but it is a fluid, easy to read introduction to Count Korzybski's incredible exploration into the nature of language and its impact on human perception at so many levels. Count Korzybski was a mathematician who understood that physicists use mathematics to describe physical events and phenomena. Therefore, there was a one to one correspondence between numbers and reality. This was not the case between language and reality. In addition to describing actual events, language can be used to generate lies, fictions, illusions, ideas. General Semantics explore this phenomenon and its impact on human perception and behaviors. Professor Weinberg is by far the most lucid of Korzybski's "students". After finishing _Levels_ I became so interested in GS that I got my hands on Korzbyski's _Science and Sanity_ a much tougher read. But much easier to follow after reading Weinberg. Essentially, as humans we experience events, objects, actions, and the universe. But we share our experiences and communicate them with language. Language is a man-made tool. As such it is as flawed as its creators. For example on any given day I can go outside, walk to the park. There I will see and hear a boy throwing a stick to his dog. The dog retrieves the stick and returns it to the boy. I can attempt to describe this experience with more and more infinite detail but I will never be able to convey my exact experience to anyone. What sensations raced through my mind moment by moment as I witnessed these events? What colors did I see, what smells did my nose alert to, what weather conditions did my skin feel, what sounds traveled through my ears into my brain, what memories did these experiences elicit, how did these memories color my experience at the moment? What words did I select to describe my experience and why? Do static words ever suffice to describe fluid experiences satisfactorily? This is Proustian stuff but dissected brilliantly by Weinberg. And this occurs in the opening chapters! Now consider. I just gave you words, a "map", about a boy and a dog, not "the" experience, the territory, the actuality. Did the "experience" as described actually happen? I wrote a map, but is the "territory" a mere fiction? Consider this thesis: Our social and personal mental conditioning, including neurosis and possibly psychosis (?)-some "mental illnesses" at any rate- may be the results of our inability to distinguish words from actual events, to a confusion of "the map with the territory." Consider: We make inferences, speculations and generalizations-"maps"-based on past experiences. These past experiences are legitimate "territory". They happened. But what is the result of behaving as if the "maps" are the "territory"? We now act out under the impression that our speculations, our generalizations and beliefs derived from past experiences are actual. They are in fact mere ideas, our preconceptions, our prejudices and our biases. And we behave using these as our guides into the future. The above is a loaded paragraph;Weinberg explains it all for you. Were this book to be written with a nineties title, I would call it _Reality for Dummies._ The second half of the book is heady stuff and pushes the envelope into describing Zen. For a better intro to Zen I prefer Alan Watt's _The Book on the taboo against knowing who you are_. (A book I read twenty years ago and have been contemplating reviewing but a book better to experience than review...) Weinberg's chapter headings make sense and their logic grasped as one reads the final sentences of that particular chapter! By the time one has read and grasped the first one hundred and twenty pages I can guarantee that your IQ will have increased by at least 5 points. How this dynamic happens eludes me to this day. As Weinberg and Korzbyski would say, it is something that must be experienced... In a further mind-blowing vein Weinberg (and Korzybski) debunk 2000 years of Western philosophies. Essentially, these philosophies may be linguistic traps and do little to illuminate the human condition. Very seditious reading... It is too bad that this book is not better known or popularly read. Perhaps it is a sign of the times. I would hope that in the future this book would not only be rediscovered and appreciated for the cultural treasure that I found it to be but would become recommended reading in every high school. The college, academic experience would be so much richer. For those who end their academic experiences at high school, I would think that this book would greatly expand their life appreciation skills. A final, personal anecdote: after reading this book I found it easy to segue into Gary Zukav's _The Dancing Wu Li Masters._ Enjoy.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the finest books on Korzybski's general semantics.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies in General Semantics (Paperback)
This book has a lucid, plain style that explains general semantics well. Adherents of general semantics seek "consciousness of abstracting," an awareness derived from science of human limitations.Chapter headings include: Introduction, Some Basic Concepts, Some Limitations of Language, The Abstracting Process, Some Consequences of Process Thinking, Consciousness Of Abstracting, The Value Of Values, Semantitherapy, Religion, and Structure And Function In Cybernetics And General Semantics. The author says that the book is not intended as a general semantics primer, but I recommend it highly for the beginner, as well as for the more advanced student
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Weinberg's Gestalt,
By
This review is from: Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies in General Semantics (Paperback)
Harry L. Weinberg provides invaluable contextual insights into understanding Alfred Korzybski's (1933) "Science And Sanity", discussing epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, etc., problems.Weinberg connects Korzybski's (1933) non-elementalism (non-additive, structure-as-a-whole) to Gestalt emergence ("Whole is more than sum of parts"): 'additively', C contains only the characteristics present in 'A or B'; whereas non-additively, C emerges as a new structure, having unique characteristics. As Weinberg asserts our mis-formulations result from an 'aristotelian' (Aristotle c. 350 B.C.) language structure ('logic'). 'Projecting' our values ("We create the world as we perceive it"): thing-ness having 'properties', false-to-facts dichotomous doctrines (relativist-absolutist, freewill-determinism, pleasure-plain, etc), etc.; upon which we further impose our moral judgements. However instead of 'faithfully', following 'inferences', involving Cassius J. Keyser's (1922) "Logical Fate". If conscious of abstracting, revising our inferences involves differing semantic reactions of humans-as-a-whole-in-an-environment(s), resolvable via factual (Science) non-elementalistic contextual degrees. As revealed by Niels Bohr's (1927) Quantum Mechanics Complementary principle. For example color does not 'exist', but an abstracting from wavelengths upon our retina. Similarly 'beauty', like 'emotions', involves gestalts formed by the observer. Finally dispelling 'identity' ('sameness') illusions: "No two events are identical and there can never be any repetition of a given state of affairs because all measurements take place at a given time". Consequently coupled with Werner Heisenberg's (1927) Uncertainty principle, blows strict determinism ('certainty'), leading to non-elementalistic causality. Weinberg asserts the experimental 'conditionality' of animals does not represent the human 'laws of learning', since symbol-using activity, can inevitably change any learned 'responses'. Advocating Wolfgang Kohler's (1925) insight instead of 'associative' learning. Connecting Korzybski's (1933) extensionalizing (factual evaluating) to the non-verbal levels, to Zen Buddhism's Satori (as discussed by Daisetz T. Suzuki), enlightenment attained by insight into the dynamic, non-symbolic, 'reality'. Providing a comparison between Korzybski's (1921)Time-binding with Abraham Maslow's (1954) theory of hierarchical needs.
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