GRGRGR:poor Zipf

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Plunging back in all akimbo, I note that Alan Westrope mentions an interesting 
Zipf fact:
>
>Interestingly, Zipf's _Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort_
>wasn't published until 1949.  I suspect Gloaming learned of it from all
>those clairvoyants who were always hanging around... :-)
>
>-- 
No doubt, though GR's use of things Zipfian raises some interesting questions on 
the book's chronology.  To my knowledge the actual expression--Principle of Least 
Effort--wasn't used by Zipf until the 1949 book.  But more interesting to me when I 
actually read this book is the very bizarre drift of Zipf's thought.  This Principle of 
Least Effort he uncovered gradually became his total obsession, and the 1949 book 
absolutely crosses a line (a Mason-Dixon line?), blending statistics with paranoia as 
Zipf--not sounding at all like a statistician--pleads to the reader that his Principle 
lays bare nothing less than the secret structure of all social relations--not just 
linguistic, but economic, political. etc.  He waxes utopian about the explanatory 
power of the Principle.  But then gets really weird, a strange note creeps in, just like 
the one that creeps into Gennaro's performance of THE COURIER's TRAGEDY. 
Zipf starts talking about (I'm going from memory here; this was in my diss) the 
injustices visited upon him by jealous rivals and the forces of repression generally, 
forces which DO NOT WANT knowledge of the principle  to be disseminated.  For 
a lover of TRP, reading the Zipf book is an amazing experience--as the reverse 
echoes start sliding up and down your brain.  I'd bet a dollar our man immersed 
himself in this book, and found , natch, a way to incorporate an entire lost history 
(Zipf firmly believed he had revolutionized EVERY area of human inquiry; that all 
social research would be altered permanently;  and that this fact would be 
self-evident to anyone who understood the Principle) into what to many readers 
must seem like a toss off comment or two exploiting an unknown guy's funny, and 
probably fictitious, name.

john m