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Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics

Book by Alfred Korzybski · 4 quotes · Ifs, Structure, World

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Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics Quotes

“Every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure that of the world as assumed by those who evolved the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use.”

“If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.”

“As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.”