7 Alfred Korzybski Quotes on Science

Alfred Korzybski quotes on science

3. If we consider that all we deal with represents constantly changing sub-microscopic, interrelated processes which are not, and cannot be 'identical with themselves', the old dictum that 'everything is identical with itself' becomes in [today's understanding of the universe] a principle invariably false to facts.' (Note: Korzybski used '1933' to specify the current understanding. This editor has subsituted the 'more general' form: [today's understanding...])

10. Our rulers: politicians, 'diplomats', bankers, priests of every description, economists, lawyers, etc. and the majority of teachers ... ignorant of modern science, scientific methods, structural linguistic and semantic issues of [today] and ... historical and anthropological background, without which a sane orientation is impossible.... as long as such ignorance of our rulers prevails, no solution of our human problems is possible.

21. ...the main achievement of Einstein was precisely in the fact that he refused to divide verbally time and space, which experimentally cannot be so divided.

26. We read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use. The guessing and ascribing of fanciful, mostly primitive-assumed structure of the world is precisely what 'philosophy' and 'metaphysics' do. The empirical search for a world-structure and the building of new languages (theories) ... of similar structure ... is precisely what science does.... It develops in the natural order, while metaphysics of every description uses the reversed, and ultimately a pathological order.

29. It would be interesting to see the Behaviorists deny that the writing of a mathematical treatise, or of some new theory of quantum mechanics represents a form of human behavior which they should study. Some day they must face the fact that they have neglected to consider a great many forms of human behavior - the most characteristic forms at that - and that therefore, they could not produce an adequate theory of the nature of the 'human mind'.

30. Aristotelian , Euclidian [line, space, length] and Newtonian [speed of light] systems... have a few unjustified infinities too many: when such an infinity is introduced into the denominator, it makes the whole expression vanish. In other words, faulty, insufficient observations leads to the introduction of ... fanciful 'infinities'.

31. The Non-Aristotelian, Non-Euclidian, and Non-Newtonian trilogy is more general than Aristotelian, Euclidian, and Newtonian trilogy... because the older systems are just particular cases of the new Non-Aristotelian, Non-Euclidian, and Non-Newtonian trilogy.