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Description
AT SUMMER'S END, in 1948, Korzybski received an unsolicited invitation from Yale University. Professor Filmer S.C. Northrop, Doctor of Letters, author, and Sterling Professor of Philosophy and Law, invited Korzybski to give one of his seminars at Yale University. The Yale student organization had requested to hear from Korzybski himself. Professor Leonard William Doob, the great sociologist and student of human behavior at Yale, also added his own name to the invitation and offered to introduce AK to the audience at the start of Korzybski's seminar.
This, for Korzybski, was the culmination of his career--to have this validation of his life's work by the top minds, at a major university, in the fields of philosophy and human behavior. It was evident from the tone of the letter of invitation that this was no invitation to a verbal combat, but a sincere and generous desire to honor Korzybski and have him expound in a full and leisurely manner his basic formulations of general semantics. A large number of the brightest and the best undergraduate and graduate students of Northrop and Doob, plus invited faculty, were signed up and waiting for him to deliver his lectures. The student organization had provided the offer of a generous honorarium and all expenses paid for Korzybski himself and his staff during the seminar.
When Kendig told me I was to accompany Korzybski to Yale, I was floating on air. My job was to sit on the lecture platform with Korzybski, as his graduate student, and take careful notes as he spoke. I was to handle the recording machinery, but also to take written notes, especially of the board diagrams, and to keep track of precisely where he was in his lectures and what he had said.
I watched in fascination as Korzybski came down the stairs from his second floor office, to get into Kendig's automobile for the trip to New Haven and the Yale seminar. He held onto the railing with both hands in a "death grip" and moved slowly, in obvious pain. But there was a determined expression on his face and an aura of confidence about him.... |
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