Saturday, August 23, 2008

Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology

Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software programs You and Your World (read and download here) focuses primarily on the metaphysical and epistemological problems of Aristotelean reasoning and its use in everyday language, covering E-Prime and how it addresses many of the semantic (and resulting perceptual) "spooks" that common language lets in.

It also covers psychosomatic healing and a possible explanation for it; non-local effects in quantum physics (Bell's Theorem) and the theories of David Bohm; and a brief recap of the Timothy Leary eight-fold consciousness theory of human consciousness which Prometheus Rising covers in much greater detail.

Check out an excerpt E and E-prime:

In 1933, in Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski proposed that we should abolish the "is of identity" from the English language. (The "is of identity" takes the form X is a Y. e.g., "Joe is a Communist," "Mary is a dumb file-clerk," "The universe is a giant machine," etc.) In 1949, D. David Bourland Jr. proposed the abolition of all forms of the words "is" or "to be" and the Bourland proposal (English without "isness") he called E-Prime, or English-Prime.

A few scientists have taken to writing in E-Prime (notable Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. E.W. Kellogg III). Bourland, in a recent (not-yet-published) paper tells of a few cases in which scientific reports, unsatisfactory to sombunall members of a research group, suddenly made sense and became acceptable when re-written in E-Prime. By and large, however, E-Prime has not yet caught on either in learned circles or in popular speech. Read on

1 comment:

Glance Vance Dance said...

Nice. This book is real knowledge + humor.