TOWARD UNDERSTANDINGROBERT ANTON WILSON- E-PRIM.E "

E PRIME, abolishing all forms of the verb "to be," has its roots in the fieldof general semantics, as presented by Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book.Science and Sanity. Korzybski pointed out the pitfalls associated with, andproduced by, two usages of "to be": identity and predication. His student, D.David Bourland, Jr., observed that even linguistically sensitive people do notseem able to avoid identity and predication uses of "to be" if they continue touse the verb at all. Bourland pioneered in demonstrating that one can indeedwrite and speak without using any form of "to be," calling this sub-set of theEnglish language "E-Prime." Many have urged the use of E-Prime in writingscientific and technical papers - Dr. Kellogg exemplifies a prime exponent ofthis activity. Dr. Albert Ellis has re-written five of his books in E-Prime, incollaboration with Dr. Robert H. Moore, to improve their clarity and to reapthe epistemological benefits of this language revision. Korzybski felt that allhumans should receive training in general semantics from grade school on,as "semantic hygiene" against the most prevalent forms of logical error, emo-tional distortion, and "demonological thinking." E-Prime provides a straight-forward training technique for acquiring such semantic hygiene.

To understand E-Prime, consider the human brain as a computer. (Note thatI did not say the brain "is" a computer.) As the Prime Law of Computers tellsus, GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT. (GIGO, for short.) The wrong soft-ware guarantees wrong answers. Conversely, finding the right software can"miraculously" solve problems that previously appeared intractable.

It seems likely that the principal software used in the human brain consistsof words, metaphors, disguised metaphors and linguistic structures in general.The Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski Hypothesis, in anthropology, holds that a changein language can alter our perception of the cosmos. A revision of language

* Roben Anton Wilson has published science fiction, historical novels, poetry, futuristic sociol-ogy and he has two plays published.f An earlier version of "Toward Understanding E-Prime" appeared in Trajectories, No. 5, thenewsletter published by Robert Anton Wilson.

316

TOWARD UNDERSTANDING E-PRIME 317

structure, in particular, can alter the brain as dramatically as a psychedelic.In our metaphor, if we change the software, the computer operates in a new way.

Consider the following paired sets of propositions, in which Standard Englishalternates with English-Prime (E-Prime).

lA. The electron is a wave.IB. The electron appears as a wave when measured with instrument-1.2A. The electron is a particle.2B. The electron appears as a particle when measured with instrument-2.3A. John is lethargic and unhappy.3B. John appears lethargic and unhappy in the office.4A. John is bright and cheerful.4B. John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach.5A. This is the knife the first man used to stab the second man.5B. The first man appeared to st^b the second man with what looked like

a knife to me.6A. The car involved in the hit-and-run accident was a blue Ford.6B. In memory, I think I recall the car involved in the hit-and-run accident

as a blue Ford.7A. This is a fascist idea.7B. This seems like a fascist idea to me.8A. Beethoven is better than Mozart.8B. In my present mixed state of musical education and ignorance, Beethoven

seems better to me than Mozart.9A. That is a sexist movie.9B. That seems like a sexist movie to me.lOA. The fetus is a person.lOB. In my system of metaphysics, I classify the fetus as a person.The "A"-type statements {Standard English) all implicitly or explicitly assume

the medieval view that has been called "Aristotelian essentialism" or "naive real-ism." In other words, they assume a world made up of block-like entities withindwelling "essences" or spooks-"ghosts in the machine." The "B"-type state-ments (E-Prime) recast these sentences into a form isomorphic to modernscience by first abolishing the "is" of Aristotelian essence and then reformulatingeach observation in terms of signals received and interpreted by a body (orinstrument) moving in space-time.

Relatively, quantum mechanics, large sections of general physics, percep-tion psychology, sociology, linguistics, modern math, anthropology, ethologyand several other sciences make perfect sense when put into the software ofE-Prime. Each of these sciences generates paradoxes, some bordering on "non-sense" or "gibberish," if you try to translate them back into the software of Stan-dard English.

Concretely, "The electron is a wave" employs the Aristotelian "is" and therebyintroduces us to the false-to-experience notion that we can know the indwel-ling "essence" of the electron. "The electron appears as a wave when measured

318 Et cetera WINTER 1989

by instrument-1" reports what actually occurred in space-time, namely thatthe electron was constrained by a certain instrument to behave in a certain way.

Similarly, "The electron is a particle" contains medieval Aristotelian soft-ware, but "The electron appears as a particle when measured by instrument-2" contains modern scientific software. Once again, the software determineswhether we impose a medieval or modern grid upon our reality-tunnel.

Note that "the electron is a wave" and "the electron is a panicle" contradicteach other and begin the insidious process by which we move gradually fromparadox to nonsense to total gibberish. On the other hand, the modern scien-tific statements, "the electron appears as a wave when measured one way" and"the electron appears as a particle measured another way" do not contradict,but compliment each other. (Bohr's Principle of Complementarity, whichexplained this and revolutionized physics, would have been obvious to all, andnot just to a person of his genius, if physicists had been writing in E-Primeall along . . . )

Looking at our next pair, "John is lethargic and unhappy" vs. "John is brightand cheerful," we see again how medieval software creates metaphysical puz-zles and totally imaginary contradictions. Operationalizing the statements, asphysicists since Bohr have learned to operationalize, we find that the E-Primetranslations do not contain any contradiction, and even give us a clue as to causesof John's changing moods. (Look back if you forgot the translations.)

"The first man stabbed the second man with a knife" lacks the overt "is" ofidentity but contains Aristotelian software nonetheless. The E-Prime trans-lation not only operationalizes the data, but may fit the fects betterif the inci-dent occurred in a psychology class, where this experiment has ofi:en been con-ducted. (The first man "stabs," or makes stabbing gestures at, the second man,with a banana, but many students, conditioned by Aristotelian software,nonetheless "see" a knife. You don't need to take drugs to hallucinate; improperlanguage can fill your world with phantoms and spooks of many kinds.)

The reader is invited to employ his or her own ingenuity in analyzing how"is-ness" creates false-to-facts reality-tunnels in the remaining examples, andhow E-Prime brings us back to the scientific, the operational, the existential,the phenomenological to what humans and their instruments actually do inspace-time as they create observations, perceptions, thoughts, deductions andGeneral Theories.

I have found repeatedly that when baffled by a problem in science, in "phi-losophy," or in daily life, I gain immediate insight by writing down what I knowabout the enigma in strict E-Prime. Often, solutions appear immediately-just as happens when you throw out the "wrong" software and put the "right"software into your PC. In other cases, I at least get an insight into why the prob-lem remains intractable and where and how future science might go aboutfinding an answer. (This has contributed greatly to my ever-escalating agnosti-cism about the political, ideological and religious issues that still generate themost passion on this primitive planet.)

TOWARD UNDERSTANDING E-PRIME 319

When a proposition resists all efforts to recast it in a form consistent withwhat we now call E-Prime, many consider it "meaningless." This view has beenpromoted by Korzybski, Wittgenstein, the Logical Positivists and (in his ownway) Niels Bohr. I happen to agree with that verdict {which condemns 99%of theology and 99.999999% of metaphysics to the category of Noise ratherthan Meaning)-but that subject must be saved for another article. For now,it suffices to note that those who fervently believe such Aristotelian proposi-tions as "A piece of bread, blessed by a priest, is a person {who died 2,000 yearsago)," "The flag is a living being," or "The fetus is a human being" do not, ingeneral, appear to make sense by normal 20th Century scientific standards.