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CANDY_FROM_A_RHETORICAL_BABY

                                             March 20, 2021

Alfred Korzybski, 1933, said:

   "When our primitive ancestors were building their
   language, quite naturally they started with the
   lowest orders of abstractions, which are the most
   immediately connected with the outside world.
   They established a language of 'sensations'.  Like
   infants, they identified their feelings with the
   outside world and personified most of the outside
   events."

   _Science and Sanity_, p.372

This style of learned exposition was common among our
primitive ancestors back in the mid-20th Century, but
it quickly went out of fashion when it was realized       So going after this
that it was indulging in unsupported fantasies about      one at this date is
pre-historic humanity.  None of us were there, we         kind-of a cheap shot.
have no records of the events, and making intelligent     Never let it be said
inferences is difficult--                                 I'd pass one up.

    The funny bit is droning on about the problem of
    a sensory-oriented language using an anthropology     Korzybski is just
    that can't possibly have been observed.               a laugh-a-minute.

                                                            SCIENCE_AND_SANITY
            And in any case, current
            thinking has it though that
            a lot of our linguistic
            capability is baked-in,            This is the kind of
            i.e. biologically innate...        thing that gets Steven
                                               Pinker ranting about
            And even the question of           blank slate-ism, so
            whether some particular            whatever you do don't
            mental feature of this is          mention it to him.
            unique to human beings isn't
            something you want to assume
            without checking.




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