Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

KORZYBSKI'S CONCEPT OF MAN 489
well taken. If it were a question of biological data, mere
mathematicians would, of course, like other sensible folk,
defer to the opinion of biologists; it is not, however, a
question of biological data, these are not in dispute; it is
a question of the logical significance of such data; and
respecting a question of logic, even biologists,-for they,
too, are sensible folk,-will probably admit that engineers
and mere mathematicians are entitled to be heard.
In this connection I desire to say that, for straight
and significant thinking, the importance of avoiding what
Korzybski calls "mixing dimensions" can not be overstressed. The meaning of the term "dimensions" as he
uses it is unmistakable; he has not, however, elaborated
an abstract theory of the idea; such an elaboration would,
I believe, show that the idea is reducible or nearly reducible to that of the Theory of Logical Types, briefly dealt
with in a previous lecture and fully outlined in the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell; it is,
moreover, very closely allied to, if it be not essentially
identical with, Professor J. S. Haldane's doctrine of
"categories" as set forth in his very stimulating and suggestive book Mebhanism, Life, and Personality (E. P.
Dutton and Co.) wherein the eminent physiologist maintains that mechanism, life, and personality belong to different categories constituting a genuine hierarchy such
that the higher is not reducible to the lower, that life,
for example, cannot be understood fully in terms of
mechanism, nor personality in terms of life. It is, you
observe, an order of ideas similar to that of Korzybski's
thesis that humans can be no more explained in terms of
animals than animals in terms of plants or plants in terms
of minerals. And it is an order of ideas that recommends
itself, to me at all events, because it is fortified by the