Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering

by Alfred Korzybski

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Human beings; Progress; Man; History / General; History / Social History; Language Arts

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Language, Linguistics

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

Alfred Korzybski was a Polish engineer, mathematician, and philosopher, most famous for creating the theory of General Semantics.

Reviews

[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have to admit - in the beginning i didn't like it, but in the end - loved it. The main premise of author is that humans are still living like animals even though they are time binding organisms rather than space binding (as animals). Basically, humans have higher intellectual abilities that are passed from generation to generation and allow humans to progress. But our social sciences are far lagging from our technological once and we are stuck in a dismal state of affair. Author condemns the premise of Capitalism (survival of the fittest) as fit for animal society but not for human one. The outdated thinking and ideas are keeping humanity in the lower levels of development. Primitive, barbaric and depressed. Great book overall though it could have been shorter.

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is strangely anachronistic in a "I-can't-seem-to-get-my-sealegs" kind of way. Sometimes, I'd forget its discussion of WWII and think it was much older, and sometimes it was so prescient as to sound modern. Nonetheless, and as brilliant a linguist as Korzybski may have been, he overstepped the bounds of his knowledge here as he spends the majority of the book praising mathematics, a language in which he was not expert. Perhaps the other thing that kept me so off-kilter was his grandiosity: "The Art and Science of Human Engineering" is his proposal for solving all the ethical and physical ills of Man. He insists it is based on a basic geometric progression of the form y=ax^kt with the understanding that Man's defining trait and power is "time-binding energy." Although not the first person to fall victim to the fallacy that unification is possible, his vision of it is unusually manic or naive - I still don't understand which.

[Jacob C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terrible. The author's arrogance is remarkable - he states an idea, expounds it vaguely, and spends one third of the book insisting that he his idea the solution to every problem in the world. His points are simply repeated a dozen times rather than actually argued out convincingly. Most frustratingly for me, he uses pseudo-Darwinian logic but clearly hasn't read, or didn't understand, any of Darwin's works.

A few ideas are interesting and useful - the concept of time-binding in general is neat - but he overstates the importance and provides too little convincing argument for me to recommend the work to anyone.

[drGonso · Rating 4 out of 5]

must

[Bryce · Rating 5 out of 5]

An earlier book by Alfred Korzybski, author of Science and Sanity . Important insights on the human capacity to learn from others widely separated in space and time, avoid mistakes, and build on past learning.

[Adrian Sinclair · Rating 5 out of 5]

solid

Amazing journey through science and thought. Hard to believe this was written so long ago. Highly recommend it. You’ll be glad you took the time to read this gem. Korzybski was a brilliant mind.

[Paul Seleznev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good mathematical explanation of live and the progress of time-binding creatures(human-beings)