Another nice quote from Korzybski is:
There is a tremendous difference between 'thinking' in verbal terms, and
'contemplating', inwardly silent, on non-verbal levels, and then searching
for the proper structure of language to fit the supposedly discovered
structure of the silent processes that modern science tries to find. If we
'think' verbally, we act as biased observers and project onto the silent
levels the structure of the language we use, and so remain in our rut of old
orientations, making keen, unbiased, observations and creative work
well-nigh impossible. In contrast, when we 'think' without words, or in
pictures (which involve structure and therefore relations), we may discover
new aspects and relations on silent levels, and so may produce important
theoretical results in the general search for a similarity of structure
between the two levels, silent and verbal. Practically all important
advances are made that way.
It is quoted in Thierry Bardini's book about Doug (p. 33) and at the
following address: http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/ak2.htm (Alfred Korzybski,
WHAT I BELIEVE).
Gil
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Park [mailto:jackpark@thinkalong.com]
Sent: mardi, 23. octobre 2001 17:20
To: unrev-II@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [unrev-II] Speaking & Thinking with E-Prime
From the creators of the statement "The Map is not the Territory"
http://www.generalsemantics.org/Articles/SPEAK_E.HTM
Consider this excerpt:
"In essence, E-Prime consists of a more descriptive and extensionally
oriented derivative of English, that automatically tends to bring the user
back to the level of first person experience. For example, if you saw a
man, reeking of whisky, stagger down the street and then collapse, you
might think (in ordinary English) "He is drunk." In E-Prime one would
think
instead "He acts drunk," or "He looks drunk," both of which statements
obviously coming closer to an accurate description of the actual
experience, and involving fewer covert assumptions than the English
original. After all, one might have encountered an actor (practicing the
part of a drunken man), a man who had spilled alcohol on himself
undergoing
a seizure of some kind, etc., etc. The E-Prime statement still leaves
these
possibilities open, whereas the "is" statement does not. Although E-Prime
usually reduces hidden assumptions, it does not exclude them (for example,
you may have seen a woman, or a robot, or an alien, etc. that looked like
a
man and acted drunk). E-Prime fosters a worldview in which the user
perceives situations as changeable rather than static, and where verbal
formulations derived from experience indicate possibilities rather than
certainties. Subjectively, I have found my creativity greatly enhanced, as
many problems that "are unsolvable" in ordinary English only "seem
unsolvable" in E-Prime! This shift in attitude can make a great
difference.
Thus, removing the "to be" verb from English results in a language of a
more phenomenological character, in that this change automatically causes
a
reduction of the number of assumptions in even simple sentences.
Statements
made in E-Prime almost always mirror first person experience far more
adequately than the "is" statements they replace. E-Prime also greatly
encourages one to use the active voice ("Smith-1 did it") rather than the
often misleading and information-poor passive voice ("it was done"). Of
course, as Bourland pointed out, one can continue the modification of
E-Prime even further, adding for example the alterations and
non-aristotelian tools that Korzybski recommended (dating, indexing,
etc.),
bringing one to E-Prime-k. My own version of E-Prime (E-Prime-p) aims at a
phenomenological ideal, of ever more adequately representing the territory
of my experience while ever more clearly communicating with others."
I pose this excerpt, in some sense, as a follow up to my earlier posts on
Loglan, a language for speaking and thinking with logic.
I also pose this excerpt since I think it is, an some other sense, related
to the evolution of a Collaborative Literacy, as is being developed by
Jeff
Conklin and his colleagues.
Robert Rosen took Aristotle to his limits in trying to formulate a means
of
modeling complex systems. The generalsemantics.org folks are speaking in
non-aristotelian terms, and, largely, for the same purposes. Frankly, I'm
having some problems getting my brain around the differences in
approach. Perhaps, somewhere 'out there', we might have an opportunity to
discuss this particular line of reasoning. That, because, I think, if we
don't find a way to articulate what we think in terms that others will be
able to unambiguously understand what we are saying, then (brace
yourselves), all this OHS/DKR stuff will be for nought (or words to that
effect).
Cheers
Jack
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Tue Oct 23 2001 - 08:37:58 PDT