EPISTEMICS: A Time-Binding Emergent from General Semantics J . SAMUEL BOIS ° In July 1949 we had the third conference on general semantics at the University of Denver . It was the last one Korzybski attended . I remember distinctly that, in my address at the final banquet, I called him a prophet . As the term `prophet' came out of my mouth, I was sur- prized that this word was the only one I could pick out of my vocabulary to express what he meant to me . I habitually felt good listening to him, not only because of what he said, but mostly because of the self-assurance he was oozing out in his speech and in his general de- meanor. Years later I found in L . L. Whyte's The Next De- velopment of Man a passage that helped me make sense of that reaction of mine, a reaction that has subsisted and even increased ever since . "Specially placed indi- viduals have continuously made correct anticipations of the future which could be recognized by others . Amidst the clamor of conflicting views the reliable voices can often be recognized by their unhesitating assurance . The attention of the many is held by any conviction which facilitates their developing tendencies ; they are fascinated by any principle that offers relaxation of ° Viewpoints Institute, Los Angeles . This paper was presented at a meeting organized by the New York State School Psychologists at Arden House on January 15, 1971 . 177 ETC . : A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS VOL . XXVIII, NO . 2 some general tension within a new form of life . It is because the ways of history have been well and truly paved by prophecy that the peoples move on .Ip. 214]." Korzybski saw time-binding as the form of human energy that brings about the emergence of new disci- plines. On this fiftieth anniversary of his functional defi- nition of man as a time-binding class of life, I present epistemics as one of the developments he anticipated . oR cEwrURms the picture that Western Man had of the Fworld was spread on a triptych . The first panel repre- sented the realm of Matter ; the second, the realm of Life; and third, the realm of Mind . Matter, life, and mind were the basic categories of empirical knowledge . Those three groups of phenomena, or natures as they were called, were utterly unlike one another; their differences were ultimate ; no bridge of thought could link one to another, except in abstract metaphysics . It was generally accepted as a fact that this tripartite universe had come into existence 4,004 years before Christ, during a most eventful week that God had devoted to the work of Creation. The sacred text read : "God saw every- thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good . On the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested." Since then, the world had remained iden- tical with itself . Whatever changes were recorded in his- tory had brought none but superficial modifications of the permanent nature of things, plants, animals, and men . The triptych had no time depth prior to the week of creation. Time itself had come into existence in the same week. Before its clock began measuring days, months, and years, there was eternity with God and his angels, good and bad, the world of the supernatural known by revela- tion and theology . Compenetrating the world of matter, life, and mind, there was a misty and mysterious world of the preternatural known in the sciences of the occult and 178 JUNE 1971 EPISTEMICS contacted by the arts of magic -the world of ghosts, gremlins, goblins, elves, leprechauns, sylphids, were- wolves, and such. By the beginning of the nineteenth century this static picture of the empirical universe began to grow a third dimension behind the flat frame of the triptych . First it extended for only a few centuries back of the fateful week of creation. Later it stretched out in millions and billions of years to a beginning that became lost in the mist of cos- mic events . Along that time dimension, spectacular changes were found to have happened in the material composition of the earth strata and in the sequence of plants and animal species. Eventually a linkage between the three panels of the triptych became imperative ; it be- came evident that life had emerged from matter and mind had emerged from life . The concept of creative evolution over eons of time had to replace the concept of the one- shot creation at a definite date . The change in the general orientation of scientific thought came slowly, almost insidiously, until a book en- titled The Origin of Species came out in 1859 . Its author, Charles Darwin, was a natural scientist, as they called them in those days . He dealt with the second panel of the triptych - that of life - and he contradicted the then prev- alent belief in the fixity of plant and animal species . The world of empirical science has never been the same since. As is the case with most eventful discoveries and inven- tions, Charles Darwin was not alone in challenging the common sense view of the universe . He had been preceded by his grandfather Erasmus, by Linnaeus, Buffon, and de Lamarck. He was accompanied in his own generation by such men as Alfred Wallace, Charles Lyell, William Hooker, and Boucher de Perthes. As a group they grad- ually pushed back in time the appearance of the planet earth and of the biosphere that wraps it up with a net of 179 ETC . : A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS VOL. XXVIII, NO. 2 living forms. With the recent invention of chemical dating, we are now able to measure with greater accuracy the time distances that separate us from pre-historic events . The whole cosmos is now seen through the concept of evolu- tion, development, and aging . There are young and old stars, galaxies, quasars, and pulsars classified as to the length of their duration. From the central panel of the triptych, evolution has invaded the first one - that of matter - and it has linked the first and second panels together in a postulation that gains more plausibility from year to year . Pasteur may have been right when he stated that, in our present cosmic era, living forms have to come from living forms; but he has not proved that it had always been so in the earlier stages of cosmic development . The third panel of the triptych - that of mind - had for many years an ill-defined boundary with the second . When did homosapiens, the modern man clearly char- acterized by his power of symbolization, appear and be- come a permanent resident of this planet? Was he the same as the various hominids, tool users and tool makers, whose remains are dug out in distant parts of the globe? Was he the same as the powerfully built Neanderthal who phased out at the third interglacial? Or is he identical with the Cro-Magnon who made his entry some 37,000 years ago and left the unmistakable records of his paint- ing, engraving, and sculpturing? It seems generally agreed that this Cro-Magnon be- longs to the third panel - that of the mind . Himself a pro- duct of evolution from matter and life, has he continued, as homosapiens, the ongoing process that made him what he is? Or is he in this twentieth century exactly the same as he was when he painted animals on the walls of the caves at Altamira and at Lascaux, when he buried his dead, with an apparent belief in an afterlife, in the soil of 180 JUNE 1971 EPISTEMICS what is now Czechoslovakia, or when he used as sacred fetishes the statuettes of fertility Venuses we find here and there? HE ANSWERS to these questions will vary according to Twhat one takes as an adequate description of members of the human species. If they are seen as made of two men- tally detachable parts, a body and a mind, the answer is that they are probably the same in body - or genetically - and possibly different in mind - or culturally. Children taken out of their cultural environment immediately after birth and reared in an entirely different milieu take on the attitudes and the manners of this milieu . Once they have reached adulthood, they are hardly distinguishable from their foster brothers and sisters . What can happen in such individual cases does not take place when a cohesive group of people from a less- developed culture are transplanted into a more sophisti- cated milieu . A gradual process of acculturation takes place. It takes two or three in some cases, even more gen- erations, for a cultural transformation to be achieved . The larger the group transplanted in a new environment, the more laborious is the process of acculturation . There are times when it fails utterly . From this it seems that when we change our unit of observation from the individual to the group the process of acculturation becomes entirely different. When we study the psycho-social evolution of mankind as a whole, where distinct stages of culture succeed one another, we have to pass from individual psychology to cultural an- thropology. We see man growing at one with an all-per- vading mode of existing, of relating himself to himself and to his surroundings . This makes him different in most re- spects from members of other cultural groups. I introduce the idea in my recent book, Breeds o f Men,2 in this way: 1 8 1 ETC . : A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS VOL . XXVIII, NO .