than the absence of hurting. It is the presenceof helping.
energy, and form is the order, structure, organization, and pattern of that matter-
energy. Within in any ‘whole-part’ order can be increasing — syntropy, order can be
decreasing — entropy, or order can be stagnant — not changing — atropy. Syntropy
and entropy are compliments. They complete each other.
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works are presented throughout the UnCommon Sense—Library. One can find
information on the internet and elsewhere on Alfred Korzybski, Buckminster Fuller,
Arthur Young and N. Arthur Coulter. But, you will find almost nothing on Edward
Haskell. For this reason, I am including some biographical information on Haskell.
family of well educated Swiss missionaries. During his childhood, the family traveled
widely throughout Europe. and Haskell learned to speak six languages.
here graduating from Oberlin College with an A.B. in 1929. He did postgraduate
studies at Columbia University for one year 1929-30, then left school to travel and
write a book. While waiting to get his book published, he returned to postgraduate
studies at Harvard University 1935-37, University of Chicago 1937-40. His book,
Lance — A Novel about Multicultural Men, was finally published in 1941. He became
a fellow at University of Chicago from 1940-43, but never completed his thesis and was
not awarded a Doctorate degree. He left University to teach, and he instructed in
sociology (human, animal, plant) and anthropology, at the University of Denver 1944-
45, and Brooklyn College, 1946-47. In 1948, he left teaching to devote himself full-time
to private research.
Education (C.U.R. E., Inc.). This was a private non-profit research organization of
scientists committed to the unification of science and education. Their goal was the
synthesis of all knowledge into a single discipline. Haskell served as the Chairman of
C.U.R. E., Inc., from its inception in 1948 until it was disbanded in the mid 1980s.
scientists and thinkers including Harold Cassidy, PhD, Professor of Chemistry at Yale
University; Willard V. Quine, PhD, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University;
Arthur Jensen, PhD, Professor of Psychology at the University of California at
Berkeley; and Jere Clark, PhD, Chairman of the Department of Economics at
Southern Connecticut University.
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multiversities, with specialists from different fields dividing knowlege into separate
preserves with specialized languages and almost no communication between them.
They were convinced that this division of knowledgeplayed a large role in the
division of the modern world.
Science. The Unified Science was to be nothing less than the Assembly of the Sciences
into a Single Discipline with a common language. While many made contributions, it
was Haskell that was the guiding force and author of the majority of seminal concepts.
at seminars and short courses at Columbia
University, West Virginia University, Southern Connecticut State College, and Drew
University New School for Social Research. The Unified Sciencereached its peak of
influence in 1972, which was marked by the publication of FULL CIRCLE — The
Moral Force of Unified Science24
North Adams State College in Massachussetts in August of 1981. General Semantics
is the term chosen by Alfred Korzybski to represent his Non-Aristotelian System of
organizing knowledge. The foundation for General Semantics can be found in
Korzybski’s book Science and Sanity25.
professor of English at North Adams State College. On the second day of the seminar,
he gave lecture on Haskell’s PCS.
faculty working very closely together, Dr. Washburn and I struck up a quick
friendship and towards the end of the seminar he gave me several books, one of which
was Haskell’s Full Circle.
York City, and we began a letter correspondence.
Edward Haskell, FULL CIRCLE: The Moral Force of Unified Science, Gordon and Breach, New
York, 1972
25Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, The Colonial Press Inc., Clinton, Mass., 1933-1948
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concept was incorporated deeply into the Unified Scienceand the Periodic Coordinate
System.
opportunity to visit Haskell in person. He was 76 years old and living alone in a small
“student” apartment on the East River near Columbia University. His tiny apartment
was filled from floor to ceiling with books and papers. There was no room to even sit
down, let alone accomodate guests. Haskell enjoyed being near the active academic
community at Columbia University. He met and communicated with students and
faculty in the coffee shops and resturants that surrounded Columbia. He was close
friends with several faculty members at Columbia including the internationally
respected Chairman of the Department of Anthropology. While Haskell was never on
the faculty at Columbia himself, his faculty friends occasionally arranged for him to
present classes and short courses at Columbia on his Unified Science.
the Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, I
am sorry to say I don’t recall his name. Over the next two years, Haskell and I would
exchange occasional letters.
hospital, he could no longer care for himself and had difficulty speaking. His family
quickly decided to put him in a nursing home and throw his life’s work — all his
papers and books — into the city dump.
the value of his work and so he begged his brother to call me. Fortunately, I was able to
intervene and I did. My wife and I invited Ed to come and live at our home in
California. He arrived a month later early in the summer of 1986.
the scientific papers and books from his apartment. Haskell lived with us for about
three months, he rapidly regained his strength and began recovering his ability to
speak. And, though he did made significant improvement, he was a shadow of the
former master scientist I had visited in New York two years earlier.
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his friends and those few family members who cared about him. He asked me to keep
his papers and books safe until he could find a place for them. He hoped to find a
University library willing to accept custody of them. To a large extent this was
wishful thinking for Haskell was not well known, and fewer still valued his work.
Haskell celebrated his 80 birthday with friends in New York, and shortly after that
suffered yet another stroke and died.
CIRCLE — The Moral Force of Unified Sciencehas been out of print for many years. I
have managed to find a copies. The greater part of The Unified Scienceremains
unpublished.
has probably been
done better in Arthur Young’s Theory of Process. Much of his work that focused on
cybernetics and general systems theory has been done elsewhere equally well or
better (Bertalanffy, et. al.). But he still made several unique contributions to human
knowing:
classes of relationships. Prior to Haskell, Neutrality
simply represented the boundary between Adversity and Synergy. Haskell recognized
that the Neutral class of relationships, in and of itself, was of equal importance to both
the Adverse class of relationships, and the Synergic class of relationships.
only have to transcend the Adversary Way, we will also have to transcend Neutrality
as well. I think this is one of the major difficulties humans face today in
understanding three-fold nature of relationships. Because Neutrality is invisible in
our paradigm of human relationships, most individuals assume if they are not
Adversaries they must be Synergic. The same old Either/Or scientific mistake.
or PCS. This at first appears
abstract and mathematical, but once understood is a powerful reflection in one
diagram of all threeclasses of relationship.
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relationships
between all stages of process. Much of his work was on relationships between
particles, atoms, molecules, bactereria, plants, and animals. The PCSallowed him to
plot the resultants of all threetypes of relationship on a single geometric grid.
was not invented by Haskell. The shape evolved and took form
from the realdata that was measuredextensionally, and plotted from analyzing
numerous relationships between particles, atoms, molecules, bacteria, plants, and
animals. The term extensional here is borrowed from Korzybski to mean from the real
world.
would be useful in anlyzing adversary, neutral, and synergic relationships between
humans and groups of humans, and finally.
— Much more important than Haskell’s
recognition of the importance of the spiritual truth “As you sow, so shall you
reap,” was his restatement of this truth as a scientific law of Nature that applied in
all seven stages of process—light, particle, atom, molecule, plant, animal and human.
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