I’ve been meaning to take a stab at Korzybski’s Science and Sanity (available on the interwebs, I believe) for a while, but I’ve heard it’s fairly impenetrable.
I had the experience, which I heard others have also had, that it was impenetrably turgid on a first reading, but perfectly clear on coming back to it a few years later. Still just as turgid, but clear. The science is also very dated. I have mixed thoughts about recommending it. It’s a bit like recommending E.E. “Doc” Smith as an introduction to science fiction. Necessary to read at some point, but not at the outset.
I’d be interested to see what anyone else who has read it thinks.
ETA: Just flicking through the online copy I found one place where the science is, I think, wrong even with respect to the knowledge of the time. “A molecule of water is broken up [by an electric current] into a positively charged hydrogen ion consisting of two hydrogen atoms, and a negatively charged oxygen ion consisting of one oxygen atom.” (chap. XL, p.686)
Available here.
I had the experience, which I heard others have also had, that it was impenetrably turgid on a first reading, but perfectly clear on coming back to it a few years later. Still just as turgid, but clear. The science is also very dated. I have mixed thoughts about recommending it. It’s a bit like recommending E.E. “Doc” Smith as an introduction to science fiction. Necessary to read at some point, but not at the outset.
I’d be interested to see what anyone else who has read it thinks.
ETA: Just flicking through the online copy I found one place where the science is, I think, wrong even with respect to the knowledge of the time. “A molecule of water is broken up [by an electric current] into a positively charged hydrogen ion consisting of two hydrogen atoms, and a negatively charged oxygen ion consisting of one oxygen atom.” (chap. XL, p.686)