WHO ARE THE FRIENDS OF SEMANTICS?
57
ingness. No capitalism, no unemployment, no wars, no fascism.
No worries. Wonderful! On this same basis Chase rejects all state·
ments of political economists dealing with general characteristics.
These are so much blah-blab. For this rejection he claims the sup–
port of Einstein, and all of modem physics. Yet the abstractions of
physics are of a considerably higher order than those of political
economy. The formulae of both classical and modern physics con–
tain some of the most powerful abstractions ev:er made. Neverthe–
less we may be reasonably certain that no physicist has ever seen
space-time stalking the market place-with or without horrid
scales. (Nor, we may venture, have any of them been disap–
pointed.)
If
Mr. Chase were consistent, and of course he is not, he
would not only have to reject physics. Since every significant state·
ment ascribes a property or treats the relation of properties, Mr.
Chase would have to reject any statement whatsoever as containing
an abstraction, being so much blab-blab. He is left with the final
clarity of silence.
But some of us will not be satisfied by silence. Mr. Chase is
included here. For this reason he must contradict himself. Contra.'
diction might have been avoided by greater care in using semantic
instruments. Our intention has not been to deprecate the importance
of semantics. On the contrary both the authors of this article are
actively interested in using the results of this discipline. Our objec–
tion is rather that Chase et al. have
not
used it.
The task is admittedly an important one. Besides demanding
technical facility of some sort, serious semantics will not obviate
the necessity for exp.eriment. There are no short-cuts to scientific
accomplishment. Mr. Chase, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Frank and Mr.
Hayakawa have not advanced social science one whit by their inept
exploitation of the theory of meaning. It is important to distin–
guish their utterances from the science of semantics.
