The book is “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics” by Alfred Korzybski. Now I am free of the clutches of endless essays, I can go back and read the things I have got wind of while studying. I have been tempted to get this book for a few years now, but with being at uni I didn’t want to get it while I was trying to study.

I don’t really know how to explain what the book is about. It calls for the rebuilding of human thinking. Modern science is based on finding general principles and rules for what is around us. This is all well and good, but can be over-general.

Korzybski coined the phrase “the map is not the territory”, meaning that it is only a representation, not a perfect model. Scientific theories are a model of our perception of reality. They are not the thing they describe. He puts forward the idea of “time binding” as being what sets us apart from lower animals. We use our memory to put things in context. Korzybski covers categorisation, and the errors that can occur in categorising things. He also covers the false categorisation that we carry out, for example Descartes making the distinction between mind and body. The whole mind/body “problem” and any other kind of dichotomous split go away when they are seen as points on a scale.

This book covers so much, I am finding it heavy going. Already, I have the feeling that Korzybki’s ideas will change my thinking and behaviour. “E-Prime”, the English language without the “is of identity” stems from this book. At uni, I found that saying something is or isn’t something caused serious problems. E-prime takes it back to my perception – what I see or think at any given time. The potential for creating faulty maps is apparent, with things changing over time and between people.

I am going to have to read this book over and over, as it contains so much clarity on our current scientific dead-end. We need to go back a step, admit our own influence on what we study and rebuild science in a quantum, post-modern way. This is going to be interesting…

If you Google for “Science and sanity” it is available on Google books. Read the intro, be blown away.