Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Underestimated Book Of The 20th Century?, September 25, 2000
In his book, Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski succeeds in presenting to his readers a distillation of many seemingly diverse branches of knowledge, including: Anthropology, Biology, Education, Logic, Mathematics, Neurology, Physics, Physiology, Psychiatry, Semantics, etc.Specialists in the above mentioned disciplines may be disappointed or even insulted at Korzybski's general, integrative style. However, Korzybski was mainly concerned about extracting the aspects of the above mentioned disciplines that have the most human value. Korzybski's attitude was definitely NOT "science for science's sake." Instead, he sought to integrate diverse branches of knowledge into a system that would be simple enough to teach to young children, so that each young child would begin life with the knowledge and wisdom that took the human race centuries of labor to achieve. Of course, if this goal could actually be achieved, the progression and survival of the human race would be greatly enhanced! Although Science and Sanity is certainly a difficult book to read and understand, Korzybski's system can be easily taught to young children. The reason for this is that Korzybski summarized his system as a non-verbal diagram. Probably, the wisdom of thousands of books are represented non-verbally on that diagram! It's true that one must know what the different parts of the diagram represent in order to appreciate or understand it; however, Korzybski's system is certainly unique in that one can explain the system to another while referring (pointing) to a diagram. This visual aid, called the Structural Differential, could be used in the education of young children as a way of simply and easily imparting "the wisdom of the ages." Note: Science and Sanity uses some abbreviations throughout the book. There are charts on pages 15 and 16 that explain these. Don't miss those charts, or you'll miss the whole book!
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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Life-Changing Book, June 6, 2002
I first read this book over 25 years ago, and it stunned me. Only a fool or the bitterest cynic could come away from this book unchanged. Whether or not you agree with all or even some of its premises and conclusions, Science and Sanity will make you keenly aware of language, psychology, and communication in all aspects of your life. You will realize how little most people know or understand about the deep and complex role language plays at home and on the world stage. This book will give you a different platform to stand on. Yes, it is a difficult book to read, but like another difficult book, Samuel Hahnemann's timeless Organon of the Medical Art, it rewards the patient and thoughtful reader in countless subtle ways over the course of time. I'd rate this book in my top ten books of a lifetime spent reading everything under the sun.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great book that one has to get of in order to get into, December 7, 1999
This book should probably be on any short list of the century's most influential books but would, ironically, never make a list of most read books. A significant number of people did read and internalize the book's message and Korzibsky's thought thus found its way into a number of diverse fields. But despite the wide dissimination of the book's message, the book itself, because it is so dense and difficult, has never had a wide reading audience. In fact, early critics made the point that a book about language and meaning should not have such difficult language that its meaning is difficult to understand. Yet this is the problem that Korzibski faced - having to use language to demonstrate the inherent limitations and dangers of language. I have read the book, having come to it from a number of popular treatments of Korzybski's work. These at least provided a framework for understanding what otherwise might have been lost to me in the author's stiff prose. The book's most basic message, that 'the map is not the territory' (the Word is not the Thing it represents), can seem trivial when stated simply. However, only a little analysis will suffice to show how easily even very bright people fall into the trap of the 'Is of identity' - the semantic error that is inherent in the syllogistic form of reasoning that makes use of statements of the form 'All A are B, C is A, therefore C is B'. Note that 'is' suggests, and indeed often is taken to be, a statement of identity - that category A is identical in some ways, to category B. This is false. As words, these simply stand for, or 'point to' certain things, which themselves are identical only on the verbal level - the level of conceptual thought - not on the non-verbal level of external reality. Because we must use language to think and communicate with others about that external reality, we always run the risk of confusing what we say about things with the reality that exits independently of our thought. The full implications of this line of reasoning is vast and extremely important. From the easy to see fallacy of reification, where having a name for something lends it a reality which in fact might not exist, to more complex issues having to do with the levels of abstraction inherent in various forms of thinking/speaking, this book touches on such a multitude of important topics that it is impossible to sum up in a few words. Those new to the concept of General Semantics might do well to start with one of the popular treatments of the subject such as Hiakawa's Language in Thought and Action. But if one moves on to the primary text the rewards will be many. It 'is' a difficult book, but deeply rewarding
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by S.I. Hayakawa
by Alfred Korzybski
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