SEMANTICS: USES AND ABUSES
15
between words and things, abstractions and concreta, definitions and
laws. Korzybski's
Science and Sanity
which is the fount of much of
the vulgar literature on the subject and which is itself a diffuse
popularization of ideas more accurately presented elsewhere, actually
maintains that our semantic blockages, fundamentally derived from
the principle of identity,
A
is
A,
arc the cause of wars, revolution, in–
sanity, prostitution and almost every other evil of modern society.
This causal theory of the wholesale influence of bad linguistic habits
on historical events is not so difierent from the theory that things can
be controlled by giving them names. It is really a form of the belief
in verbal magic in logical reverse. To believe that by pronouncing an
incantation a man can be raised from the dead, or an enemy slain, is
magic. The belief, however, that a man can kill himself by mistaking
a word for its referent, or that a civilization can be destroyed by "bad
language"
is,
it would appear, a legitimate theorem in popular
semantics. A well-known writer of a book on the tyranny of words
asserts on one page that to speak of a war of ideas is nonsense; and
on another he laments that men are being driven to death by ab–
stractions.
The practical import;lJJcc of a method of making our ideas clear
is obvious. It need not be fortified by large and untenable claims.
Without some method of distinguishing between meaningful
state~
ments and noises; between statements of fact, statement<> of value,
statements about statements; between predictions, resolutions and
hopes, etc., our thinking about many problems becomes muddled.
Muddled thinking tends to prevent us from finding solutions. False
starts may be made, action may be delayed, and we may suffer as a
result of what we do or leave undone. Clear thought which guides
action
may
give us power but
how much
power and
over what
is
not
the business of semantics to determine. A hygienic language un–
doubtedly can facilitate our communicating with each other when
we are discussing cancer or unemployment. But we may safely leave
the question of the
causes
of cancer or unemployment to the biologist
or economist. Even they, no matter how semantically clear-headed
they may be, may not be able to discover the causes or cure the
disease. Semantics cannot save the world; nor can semantic aber–
rations destroy it. The investigation of causes is the work of the prac–
ticing scientist not a footnote to linguistic analy is.
Another misconception of popular semantics is the assumption
that, where analysis has revealed that two conflicting doctrines are
dealing with uninterprctcd terms or arc committed to statements that
are beyond any possibility of empirical verification, therefore no
genuine conflict of any kind is involved. It is not hard to show that
