Science and Sanity
#1124 of 2,654 all-time
Science and Sanity
Alfred Korzybski
6 people recommended it in 5 threads, 2013–2019.
What people on Hacker News said
It's a very insightful tome about the relationship between our use of language and the reality is supposedly describes, and the implications of this imprecise relationship on the quality of our thought.
That said, this book opened my eyes to important concerns about language and cognition that, only in retrospect, seem glaringly obvious.
So when Chomsky wrote his stuff, Korzybski had already addressed this very comprehensively.
Non-Aristotelianism: While Aristotle wrote a true definition gives the essence of the thing defined ..., general semantics denies the existence of such an 'essence'. [...] In general semantics, it is always possible to give a description of empirical facts, but such descriptions remain just that—descriptions—which necessarily leave out many aspects of the objective, microscopic, and submicroscopic events they describe.
Where it comes up
- Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything? 2019 · 2 recommendations
- Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List? 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models? 2017 · 1 recommendation
- Alan Kay's reading list 2016 · 1 recommendation
- Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life 2013 · 1 recommendation