SOURCE: "The Nature of Discourse," in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. X, No. 34, March 10, 1934, pp. 546-47.

In the following review of Science and Sanity, Hook commends Korzybski's work in logic and mathematics, but considers the presentation of his material to be overbearing and repetitious.

It is interesting to note that although philosophers have discoursed about all things, real and imaginary, the nature of discourse itself has received philosophical attention only during the last generation. It has become increasingly evident, however, that some of the great historic problems of metaphysics and logic have arisen primarily as a result of profound linguistic confusion. Clarification can only be achieved if we take the nature of discourse as the subject matter of discourse and ask under what conditions it is possible for discourse to render what is not discourse with a minimum of ambiguity and indeterminancy. Alfred Korzybski's book [Science and...