Thursday, April 23, 2009

"Nothing Twice"

In Science and Sanity, Korzybski stated one of the basic postulates of general semantics, non-identity, thusly:
"We must be aware continuously that in life on the un-speakable level we deal only with absolute individuals, be they objects, situations, or s.r [semantic (evaluational) reactions]." (p. 396, 5th Ed.)
I found a lovely poem "Nothing Twice" by his fellow Pole Wislawa Szymborska who gives the notion of non-identity her poetic turn. The first verse:
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
A link to the rest of the poem—"Nothing Twice"

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