FREEDOM IN A VACUUM
Wittmer, Felix
Freedom in a Vacuum PRIMER OF INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. Edited by Howard Mumfard Jones. Harvard University Press. 191 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by FELIX WITTMER T J OWABD MUMFORD JOKES. Professor of...
...Representative kenneth b. keating's statement on the communist control bill, of may 18, 1948, or that of representative Wint smith, on the same subject, of the following day, though by no means incontestable, are more pertinent than any of the jurisdictional passages of this anthology...
...and prove mighty little concerning the problem of dealing with communists, today...
...what the book has not is a creative, productive approach to the problem of clarifying and organizing our thinking...
...All excess leads to ruin...
...e. wordy) orientation and the need for a multi-valued and extcnsional (i...
...How Words Use Men LANGUAGE IN THOUGHT AND ACTION...
...would it be proper to let maniacs speak in public, or degenerates, or criminals...
...and he maintains his conviction that misunderstandings,, abuses and lack of conscious control of language constitute a formidable obstacle to individual and social well-being...
...no French, German, Italian or Dutch source is included...
...the editor displays partiality by merely printing parts of grenville clark's public letter...
...it makes us once more realize that starry-eyed profs, enamored with liberty, are quite capable of killing it...
...while they reveal a noble and courageous mind, they are very vulnerable, on the whole, and in particular from a legal point of view...
...he just has not put his teeth into the matter...
...The author has a highly-developed journalistic flair for rendering simple insights into the workings of language palpable...
...For instance, the stand at james rhyne killian, President of massachusetts institute of Technology, for "unqualified freedom of thought and investigation" (in defense of dirk jan struik) may appeal to romantic souls but is somewhat out of touch with the dread reality of our time...
...On the whole the author's claim for the therapeutic benefit of semantics (defined as the study of human interaction through the mechanisms of /linguistic communication) is more jpdderate than it was in his previous book or than one finds expressed by ardent Korzybskians...
...its self-appointed task is that of "trans^ lating what is already known in semantics into usable terms...
...the editor might well have given some consideration to the wholesomeness of refraining from laying our platforms wide open to the invading expert grave-diggers of liberty...
...His theme is how men use words and how words use men...
...If I am to rtoe thinking of people in terms of simple oouUSKies like Jews and Aryans, pro-Soviet and fascist, and the like, in what way am I to start thinking •bout them...
...307 pp...
...Xet, what is civilisation without a healthy mind...
...Hayakawa thus conceives of semantics not as a panacea but rather as a usable instrument in overcoming the confusions of contemporary life...
...Consequently, they are not integrated, they hang in the air...
...e. factual) orientation in thought and language...
...as to this primer by an associate of f. o. matthiesen (the old-timer who has battled for Browder and Bridges), and of harlow shapley (who fights with fadeyev and Robeson for the calm of stalinist peace), it proves one point only...
...the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of thos'1 pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes...
...Now scientists don't become scientific by learning how to avoid intensional and two-valued thinking...
...WHAT IT HAS is seventeen entertaining chapters on elementary principles, suggestions, confusions and cautions with regard to some of the pses of language...
...the book is not meant as such...
...T will not say anything In detail here about what team to me to be lapses on Mr...
...They learn the latter as by-produets of learning how to think effectively in their domain...
...free speech for Communism, reference to the Smith Act, the Voorhis Act, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Alien Control Law, and the Espionage act of 1917, as amended in 1940, should have been a minimum requirement, even in a primer...
...For every error there is a corresponding truth do put it crudely)) and to eliminate the error is still to leaves vacuum which, JV not filled by the truth, will be fitted by another error...
...in this outspokenly materialistic age, In winch the irratiensdism of absolutist tstiuisillsiii) nuMsi to liimipli |po many honorable men have letted to recognize that Communist disregard of individual dignity is as dangerous to the mind as is opium to the body...
...The very common sense inherent in democracy (which is the middle way, the way of give and take) should guide us to "qualify" whatever we undertake...
...as long as our government sees n<emergency in moscow's global onslaught on the last citadel of liberty, and continues to call a conspiracy a "party...
...the future historian may wall record that the impractical naivete of a number of harvard liberals has contributed sadly to the confusion of the human mind, in the darkest hours of our history...
...it is aimed at a mass public and is written at the appropriate level...
...in an ordinary textbook) chosen and created in a spirit of up-to-dateness that clearly seems intended to make them a pleasure to work at...
...if >^»sia_lhe intention of the editor to darify^ssjtgal aspects of Felix Wittmer teaches histofy^lP Montclair (N...
...you are thus enabled to enjoy learning both by precept and example that, for instance, words are not things, words never say nil about anything, no word ever has exactly the name meaning twice (e...
...it is, of course, legally correct for a gerhart eisler to speak on harvard's campus, while already contemplating the illegal act of jumping bail Whether some voUmtasy #slf -disc ipl ine on the past of Harvard's leaders might not have been a greater service to our tradition the* permitting him to be let young people—that is another question...
...The editor has offered us some world famous and inspiring excerpts from Francis beacon, john milton, thomas Jefferson, and john stuart mill...
...sort, THIS 18 A SERIOUS lack, and for a good reason...
...happen to be statements of dissent...
...g. cow,, namely bessie, is not cow», namely daisy, and indeed bessie,w is not the same as bessie,**), and a number of other principles having to do with such matters as the influence of bias on thought, the differences between intensional and extcnsional thinking, the differences between language used to inform us and language used to affect us, the directive use of language in social control, the -affective use of language in art, the function and use of abstraction, the dangers of a twovalued orientation and in general and summarizing all, the fallacy of in ten sional (i...
...that abstractive generalization consists in retaining the common elements and ignoring the differences, or his amazing non-»equitur in supposing that reliance on two-< valued toste leads to what he calls twovalued oriental km <so that tf yeurely on the logic you learned in colies* you tend to he a bigot or worse—in this, I fear, he has forgotten that 'two-vaU»edH means different things in different contexts...
...All of mem belong to Anglo-Saxon civilization...
...He tries to help the plain man deal with the words that fly at him and that he lets fly so as to be their master rather than their slave...
...In the penultimate chapter there is a short section on the scientific attitude, which recognizes its importance as productive...
...Mistakes in thinking and using language can't be demanded simply by concentrating on them...
...The way to correct them is to provide a positive way of dealing with the situation...
...reviewed by ALBERT HOFSTADTER CONSIDERING THE BARRAGE of words that the plain man undergoes every day of his life, as well as the more or less feeble counterbarrage he himself has to conduct, said plain man is sorely in need of instruction in principles and techniques...
...It is a book i would recommend for...
...People's difficulties ' in effecting, interpreting and evaluating linguistic communications are only one of the sources of personal and social problems...
...john stuart mill, in the very selection of the editor, could teach him a number of things, as when he states...
...J.) State Teachers College...
...would there be any sense in exposing ourselves to those who advocate obscenities, drug orgies, or murder...
...and even in relation to this task it does not attempt what one might think of as a theoretically integrated job...
...Brace and Company...
...THE BOOK 18 particularly weak in its random choice of a few legal oplnimjsby zechariah chaffee, jr...
...Harcourt...
...There is a certain amount ef lorn talk in the contemporary selections of the editor, and evidently much laekef acquaintance with the fraudulent and criminal operations of SUlimst-trained professional revolutionists, in his introduction...
...why is defense of Moscow less absurd, considering that it means defending the genocide of Katyn, the criminality of the scores of Mind wen ty trials, and the slavery of the Siberiaa . camps...
...hayakawa suggests that we all become more flexible in our views of the possibilities in any situation (multivalued orientation) and that we try to replace the habit of guiding ourselves by words alone (intenslonal orientation) by the habit of guiding ourselves by facts (extensions...
...and even the application of semantics to social problems demands a knowledge of fields other than semantics...
...but they are not especially useful in this setting because the editor has avoided any historical, social or political analysis...
...Professor of English at Harvard UniJL'"j§_ versity, has collected fifteen (mostly literary) selections of the last three and a hah* centuries, to acquaint the reader with problems of intellectual freedom...
...it would be fun, and not very difficult, to use several of chaffee's passages to question the rather obvious plea of the editor's introduction...
...the three opinions of oliver wendell holmes, jr...
...he might have pointed out how many degrees of attitude there exist between voluntary boycott of communists oi official communist-fronters, and persecution...
...There is no explanation for this apparent limitation of the material...
...it is hardly possible and it would hardly be fair to discuss Language in Thought and Action as a treatise in semantics, that is as a serious attempt to study the nature of symbolic communication, its function in the dynamics of personality development and social integration, and in general its role in the determination of human behavior...
...Hayakawa'* part, such iff his peculiar notion at abstraction in virtue of which the word "Bessie" is ipore abstract than the cow it names and the word "cow" is more abstract than the word "Bessie," or his dependence upon the Aristotelian idea (shades of the non-Aristotelians...
...By S. I. Hayakawa, in consultation with Basil H. Pillard...
...Hayakawa tries to come to the rescue in this book...
...if anyone, after reading...
...orientation), Shis is very laudable advice...
...Books, like men, should he praised for their virtues and corsmUera ted with for their defects...
...he should have given ober some space to present his side of the story...
...one of the most objectionable features of his primer consists in its superficial one-sidedness even though the maryland supreme court decided against frank b. ober...
...Eight of the documents refer to events prior to World War I; seven of them deal with cases of the last three decades...
...but i would not want to be misunderstood...
...this hasty and disorganized anthology, imagines that john stuart mill, deiender of liberty, arquM mtematif have defended the right of Communist agents or dupes to undermine our way, he is sorely misled...
...The uninitiated— and I take it that primers are primarily edited tor them— are thus induced to believe that intellectual freedom poncems exclusively British and American rather than, at least, western civilization...
...no one would want to quibble with these...
...oliver w«3«"*ss*^jjlines, jr., and wilbur j. bender...
...But, unfortunately, Language in Thought and A*' tion is somewhat short on positive precepts and examples along the line of creative, productive thinking of a multi-valued and extensions...
...its consistency is somewhat close to meringue, and it tastes sweet...
...he also provides loads of "Applications" (which are what would be called "Exercises"' Albert Hoittadlsr Is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mew York University...
...what it has, rather than one i would advise against for what it hasn't...
Vol. 33 • March 1950 • No. 9
