LINGUISTICS AND THE FUTURE: Some Implications of General Semantics1

Abstract

IT IS EVIDENT,’ wrote Hume in his introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature , ‘that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that, however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent upon the science of man; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties…. Here, then, is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches: to leave the tedious lingering method which we have hitherto followed, and, instead of taking now and then a castle or village on the frontier, to march directly to the capital or center of these sciences—to human nature itself—which, being once masters of, we may everywhere else hope for an easy victory…. There is no question of importance whose decision is not comprised in the science of man; and there is none which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending, therefore, to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a complete system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security.’