Source: Mathematical Monads (1889), p. 268
Context: As the mathematics are now understood, each branch — or, if you please, each problem, — is but the study of the relations of a collection of connected objects, without parts, without any distinctive characters, except their names or designating letters. These objects are commonly called points; but to remove all notion of space relations, it may be better to name them monads. The relations between these points are mere complications of two different kinds of elementary relations, which may be termed immediate connection and immediate non-connection. All the monads except as serve as intermediaries for the connections have distinctive designations.
“From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations.”
Source: Science and Sanity (1933), p. 20.
Context: The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.
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Alfred Korzybski 15
Polish scientist and philosopher 1879–1950Related quotes
An introduction to this book
The Religion of God (2000)
Note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind http://books.google.com/books?id=GxIuAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=james+mill&ei=jsFoR7yAOYfQiwHEzdVv&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPA5,M1 (1829) by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)
“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.”
名不正,则言不顺
Paraphrased as a chinese proverb stating "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name."
Source: The Analects of Confucius
Source: The Analects, Chapter XIII
quoted in McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed by W. Terrence Gordon, 2010, p. 167
1980s
"Ain't No Words for the Things I'm Feeling"
Universal Hall (2003)