THE TRENDS OF EVOLUTION 185 



to-fact orientations," he is enslaved by his own neuro-lin- 

 guistic reactions and cannot progress. 



Past cultures have always been a mixture of true-to-fact 

 and false-to-fact orientations. Usually a culture has enjoyed 

 some efficient techniques, even if it was only the hunting, 

 fishing, and canoe-building technique of a savage people; 

 but there has always been a body of superstition, false-to- 

 fact orientations, erroneous notions about hygiene and dis- 

 ease as related to gods and devils and the like, that has en- 

 dangered the culture during epidemics and other periods of 

 environmental adversity. In modern civilizations there is a 

 considerable true-to-fact orientation in science, technology, 

 and hygiene; the social and religious organization is still 

 badly hampered by false-to-fact orientations, some of which 

 show little promise at present that they will improve in the 

 near future. And in the meantime we face the grave danger 

 that a sick and superstitious orientation may use the tech- 

 nology of the atom to destroy us. 



It was this situation in our societies that led Korzybski to 

 the creation of his kind of semantics. Being himself an en- 

 gineer, he was impressed with the great difference in lan- 

 guage behavior between scientists and engineers at work 

 at one extreme and the language behavior of people with 

 strong superstitions, believers in demagogues, and psychot- 

 ics at the other extreme. The behavior of the scientist at 

 work is very effective and leads to explanations of world 

 phenomena and to some control over specific situations. The 

 language used in science is in harmony with true-to-fact 

 orientations and to what Korzybski terms the non-Aristo- 

 telian principles of general semantics. Particularly in recent 

 years, scientists at work are acutely aware of the limita- 

 tions of language, and are conscious of the need for vigi- 

 lance and clarification, especially in the use of terms 

 applied to different sciences. They are always testing and 

 retesting, operationally, their judgments in an effort to in- 

 crease meaningfulness and predictive value. They are be- 



