ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from October 2004

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from October 2004

General semantics theory: its implications for psychotherapy.
October 1, 2004... ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to show the relevance of the theory of general semantics for the psychotherapy field. General semantics was developed by Alfred Korzybski during the last century. It is concerned with, among other things,...

General semantics and fuzzy logic.
October 1, 2004... LOGIC HAS LONG BEEN USED to evaluate the "truth" of reasoning. This is often a weak method of evaluating, since logic can only tell us if the rules of the language have been violated, and it cannot evaluate the truth or falsity of any statement...

Using GS in the goal essay to combat the IFD disease.
October 1, 2004... AFTER ADMINISTERING preliminary diagnostic exams (uncovering problems in grammar and usage), I generally assign the goal essay as the first graded assignment. Because students draw upon their own experience, the goal essay provides them with...

Inflating the stone.
October 1, 2004... MONEY is a thing, an abstraction, and a symbol. According to general semantics, which is concerned with use of symbols, we can describe money as any of the above, depending on our purpose. This story involves a curious practice in my...

General semantics and authoritarianism.
October 1, 2004... WHEN I FIRST encountered general semantics many decades ago, it was a revelation to me; it has been an inspiration ever since. Over the years, however, I have increasingly sought to find for myself a psychological cohesiveness to its concepts...

Body awareness in theory and practice.
October 1, 2004... "Attention, Attention... Here and now, boys; here and now...," the mynah birds call in the forest of Aldous Huxley's utopia, Island. (1) ATTENTION (AWARENESS) SEEMS CRUCIAL to the process of improving one's body use. Students of...

Moving beyond blame.
October 1, 2004... THE ENGLISH TEACHER, standing in the hall, waited for her eighth-grade general semantics class to meet. She saw students milling about--some shouting angrily, others crying openly. She heard the words: "That bus driver should be lynched." "We...

Never the same river.
October 1, 2004... HERACLITUS THE GREEK cast a long shadow before him. He contended that one cannot step in the same river twice. The Greek was going beyond the assertion that no two things are exactly alike to the assertion that no one thing is ever twice...

Quotes.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... A sentence can't mean anything to you unless you understand it. Moreover, meaning is always meaning to someone. There is no such thing as a meaning of a sentence in itself, independent of any people. When we speak of the meaning of a...

Abstractions.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Books are carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. BARBARA TUCHMAN The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot...

From the president.(Editorial)
October 1, 2004... This summer I took advantage of my new role as President of the Board. I picked up the phone and called members who had recently renewed their membership. Everyone I spoke to generously indulged my curiosity and provided me with wonderful...

A shared field model of communication.(Metaphors In Action)
October 1, 2004... WHEN TWO HUMAN BEINGS enter each other's field of perception, they are then in communication. There is no sender or receiver. Each person is both "sending" and "receiving," constantly. They cannot not communicate. This means that if people...

"Killer bees" slow down.(Illustrating General Semantics)
October 1, 2004... HOW DO YOU PREDICT what things will be like in the future? Basically, you consider the present, and then factor in your estimate of the rate of change. I recall automobile shows of 25 years ago which included a "concept car" which was labeled...

Hypnocounseling: An Eclectic Bridge Between Milton Erickson and Carl Rogers.(Books)(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... Hugh Gunnison. Hypnocounseling: An Eclectic Bridge Between Milton Erickson and Carl Rogers. Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books, 2003. This book merges the philosophies of Milton Erickson's "utilization" approach with Carl Rogers'...

Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950.(Books)(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... Charles Murray. Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Using a variety of statistical analyses, Charles Murray in Human Accomplishment has compiled...

The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land.(Books)(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... Donna Rosenthal. The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land. New York: Free Press, 2003. This well-written, well-researched book indexes "Israelis"--a multi-ethnic, multi-religious collection of 6.7 million people who live in a...

Fifty years ago in etc.(Retrospect)
October 1, 2004... The word "value" is an ambiguous term. There is the use of the word in mathematics, where it means practically the same thing as quantity. There is the meaning of an objective standard for judging the worth of anything, as for example, in the...