Word: aristotelian
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Theory of General Semantics is exceedingly complex (Korzybski calls it a "non-Aristotelian system"), but its method of instruction is simple. Chief instrument of training is the "structural differential." By handling this implement, students (who call it "the semantic rosary") learn graphically that there are different, "nonidentical" orders of meaning connected with each basic phenomenon. Thus, one plate in the implement represents a phenomenon (e.g., an apple), and the holes in it represent its infinite number of scientific characteristics, some perceptible to man, some unknown. Linked to that is a disc representing the physical, perceptible object, and to that...
...many, all of them more than slightly insane. On no other hypothesis can one contemplate the present without an unpleasant intellectual vertigo. As foreign office vies with foreign office in the publication of phantasmal solemnities which become increasingly void and without rational substance, one recalls with cheerful malice the Aristotelian dictum that "Man is a rational animal." In a wholly objective mood one is tempted to congratulate the rest of the animal kingdom on its fortunate escape...
Then he began refuting the Briggsian precepts. Recommending an Aristotelian hierarchy of learning, said...