New Kind of Sense

Last week 200 sworn enemies of Aristotelian logic gathered at the University of Denver for the Second American Congress on General Semantics. All disciples of Count Alfred Korzybski (founder of general semantics), all men who had applied general semantics to their various callings, they included professors, students, lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, dentists, newspapermen, a musician, a movie producer.

They had remarkable achievements to report.

General semantics is not to be confused with semantics, the science of meanings, whose chief exponent is Harvard's Professor Ivor Armstrong Richards, and chief application, Basic English. General semantics is a new system of thought.

Count Alfred calls it "a non-Aristotelian system," describes it as "a new extensional discipline which explains and trains us how to use our nervous systems most efficiently." In English: general semantics aims to teach men to overcome their prejudices in responding to words or appearances.

At his Institute of General Semantics in Chicago, which he founded three years ago (TIME, Nov. 21, 1938), one of Korzybski's favorite lecture stunts is to summon a girl student to the platform, call her names, slap her face. When his students "recoil and shiver," he explains that their reaction "was an organismal evaluation very harmful in principle, because they identified the seen facts with their judgments, creeds, dogmas, etc. Thus their reactions were entirely unjustified, as what they have seen turned out to be merely a scientific demonstration of the mechanism of identification." Since his first sparse congress in 1935, Korzybski has made progress. As advisers and sponsors last week he had Anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski (Yale) and Earnest A. Hooton (Harvard); Psychiatrist Adolf Meyer (Johns Hopkins Hospital) ; Author Walter B. Pitkin; Merchant Richard Weil Jr. (L. Bamberger & Co.); University of Denver's Chancellor Caleb F. Gates Jr. Delegates sat down to harangue each other in a non-Aristotelian jargon that was baffling to casual listeners.

Bald Count Alfred, pacing the platform and waving a cane, spoke on "Neuro-linguistic and Neuro-semantic Factors in a Disintegrating Culture." Suddenly he shot at his audience: "Would you want predictability?" When they roared "No," Count Alfred looked shocked, shouted: "What, you do not want predictability?" As the Count continued, in a strong Polish accent, the audience hung on every word, nodded unanimously when he cried: "Is-ness is insanity." Other speakers: Dr. Charles B. Congdon, University of Chicago psychiatrist, who illustrated his lecture ("Youth in Chaos: Cultural Implications of an Extensional Analysis of Student Problems") with sleight-of-hand tricks.

Mathematicians Hugh G. and Lillian R. Lieber, who delivered their paper ("Science--The Modern Totem Pole") in blank verse, illustrated it with a drawing of a totem pole (see cut) built of five geometric figures intended to prove that science "has within it a philosophy which can protect us from the errors of our own loose thinking."

Edwin Green, assistant to the editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, who displayed copies of his paper with stories labeled Propaganda, Verified, Not Verified. Said he: "Through . . . Aristotelian journalistic practices, the domestic press is ... training the nervous systems of the masses in animalistic reactions. . . ."

Experiments were reported in which general semantics had cured practically every known human ailment:

^ Dr. Congdon said that of 394 cases of student maladjustment (infantilism, alcoholism, kleptomania, homosexuality, all sorts of neuroses), 75% had been improved by general semantics treatments; some had been cured in an hour.

^Teachers said they had cured pupils of poor reading, incoherent writing, stage fright, stuttering.

^ Lawyers said general semantics had helped them understand laws better.

^ A securities salesman said it had helped him save his clients' money.

^ A U.S. Army doctor said it had helped reconcile soldiers to Army discipline.

^ Doctors said it had helped cure impotency, frigidity, nymphomania.

^ A dentist said it had helped make fillings stay put in patients' teeth (by giving them emotional stability).

>-Dr. Hildreth Caldwell, a Los Angeles obstetrician, said it had helped make honeymoons happier.

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