NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Alfred Korzybski

Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski is a philosopher and scientist born on July 3, 1879 in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire and died on March 1, 1950, in Lakeville, Connecticut, USA. He is probably best-remembered for developing the theory of general semantics. Image File history File links from http://www. ... is the 184th day of the year (185th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1879 (MDCCCLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Motto: Contemnit procellas (It defies the storms) Semper invicta (Always invincible) Coordinates: , Country Poland Voivodeship Masovia Powiat city county Gmina Warszawa Districts 18 boroughs City Rights turn of the 13th century Government - Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (PO) Area - City 516. ... Map of Congress Poland. ... The subject of this article was previously also known as Russia. ... is the 60th day of the year (61st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Lakeville, Connecticut is a village in Salisbury in Litchfield County, Connecticut, on Lake Wononskopomuc. ... Look up engineer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... Leonhard Euler, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and research is the field of mathematics. ... is the 184th day of the year (185th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1879 (MDCCCLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Motto: Contemnit procellas (It defies the storms) Semper invicta (Always invincible) Coordinates: , Country Poland Voivodeship Masovia Powiat city county Gmina Warszawa Districts 18 boroughs City Rights turn of the 13th century Government - Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (PO) Area - City 516. ... Map of Congress Poland. ... The subject of this article was previously also known as Russia. ... is the 60th day of the year (61st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Lakeville, Connecticut is a village in Salisbury in Litchfield County, Connecticut, on Lake Wononskopomuc. ... General Semantics is a school of thought founded by Alfred Korzybski in about 1933 in response to his observations that most people had difficulty defining human and social discussions and problems and could almost never predictably resolve them into elements that were responsive to successful intervention or correction. ...

1 Early life and career
2 General semantics
3 Korzybski and to be
4 Anecdote about Korzybski
5 Criticisms
6 Impact
7 See also
8 External links
9 Further reading

Early life and career

Alfred Korzybski's family coat-of-arms (Habdank).

He came from an aristocratic family whose members had worked as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers for generations. He learned Polish at home and Russian in the schools; and having a French governess and a German governess, he became fluent in four languages as a child. As an adult, he chose to train as an engineer. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Abdank - is a Polish Coat of Arms. ... Aristocracy is a form of government in which rulership is in the hands of an upper class known as aristocrats. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... Engineering is the design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes. ...

Korzybski was educated at the Warsaw University of Technology. During the First World War Korzybski served as an intelligence officer in the Russian Army. After being wounded in his leg and suffering other injuries, he came to North America in 1916 (first to Canada, then the United States) to coordinate the shipment of artillery to the war front. He also lectured to Polish-American audiences about the conflict, promoting the sale of war bonds. Following the war, he decided to remain in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1940. His first book, Manhood of Humanity, was published in 1921. In the book, he proposed and explained in detail a new theory of humankind: mankind as a time-binding class of life. Warsaw University of Technology is the largest academic school of technology in Poland, and one of the largest in East Europe, employing 2. ... â€œThe Great War â€ redirects here. ... Military intelligence (abbreviated MI, int. ... 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... A Polish American is an American citizen of Polish descent. ... In law, naturalization refers to an act whereby a person acquires a citizenship different from that persons citizenship at birth. ... Year 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full 1940 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... General semantics is an educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950) during the years 1919 to 1933. ...

General semantics

Korzybski's work culminated in the founding of a discipline that he called general semantics (GS). As Korzybski explicitly said, GS should not be confused with semantics, a different subject. The basic principles of general semantics, which include time-binding, are outlined in Science and Sanity, published in 1933. In 1938 Korzybski founded the Institute of General Semantics and directed it until his death. General Semantics is a school of thought founded by Alfred Korzybski in about 1933 in response to his observations that most people had difficulty defining human and social discussions and problems and could almost never predictably resolve them into elements that were responsive to successful intervention or correction. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Institute of General Semantics is a not-for-profit corporation established in 1938 by Alfred Korzybski, located in Fort Worth, Texas. ...

In simplified form, the "essence" of Korzybski's work was the claim that human beings are limited in what they know by (1) the structure of their nervous systems, and (2) the structure of their languages. Human beings cannot experience the world directly, but only through their "abstractions" (nonverbal impressions or "gleanings" derived from the nervous system, and verbal indicators expressed and derived from language). Sometimes our perceptions and our languages actually mislead us as to the "facts" with which we must deal. Our understanding of what is going on sometimes lacks similarity of structure with what is actually going on. He stressed training in awareness of abstracting, using techniques that he had derived from his study of mathematics and science. He called this awareness, this goal of his system, "consciousness of abstracting." His system included modifying the way we approach the world, e.g., with an attitude of "I don't know; let's see," to better discover or reflect its realities as shown by modern science. One of these techniques involved becoming inwardly and outwardly quiet, an experience that he called, "silence on the objective levels." This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Korzybski and to be

Many supporters and critics of Korzybski reduced his rather complex system to a simple matter of what he said about the verb 'to be.' His system however, is based primarily on such terminology as the different 'orders of abstraction,' and formulations such as 'consciousness of abstracting.' It is also often said that Korzybski actually opposed the use of the verb "to be," an unfortunate exaggeration (see 'Criticisms' below). He thought that certain uses of the verb "to be," called the "is of identity" and the "is of predication," were faulty in structure, e.g., a statement such as, "Joe is a fool" (said of a person named 'Joe' who has done something that we regard as foolish). In Korzybski's system, one's assessment of Joe belongs to a higher order of abstraction than Joe himself. Korzybski's remedy was to deny identity; in this example, to be continually aware that 'Joe' is not what we call him. We find Joe not in the verbal domain, the world of words, but the nonverbal domain (the two, he said, amount to different orders of abstraction). This was expressed in Korzybski's most famous premise, "the map is not the territory." Note that "the map is not the territory," uses the phrase "is not", a form of the verb "to be." This example (one of many) shows that he did not intend to abandon the verb as such. In fact, he expressly said that there were no structural problems with the verb 'to be' when used as an auxiliary verb or when used to state existence or location. It was even 'OK' sometimes to use the faulty forms of the verb 'to be,' as long as one was aware of their structural limitations. Dr. David Bourland coined the term E-Prime, short for English Prime, in the 1965 work A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime to refer to the English language modified by prohibiting the use of the verb to be. E-Prime arose from Alfred Korzybskis General Semantics and his... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Dr. David Bourland coined the term E-Prime, short for English Prime, in the 1965 work A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime to refer to the English language modified by prohibiting the use of the verb to be. E-Prime arose from Alfred Korzybskis General Semantics and his...

Anecdote about Korzybski

One day, Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students, and he suddenly interrupted the lesson in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row, if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit. "Nice biscuit, don't you think", said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously. Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies". The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to throw up, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet. "You see, ladies and gentlemen", Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter." Apparently his prank aimed to illustrate how some human suffering originates from the confusion or conflation of linguistic representations of reality and reality itself. (Source: R. Diekstra, Haarlemmer Dagblad, 1993, cited by L. Derks & J. Hollander, Essenties van NLP (Utrecht: Servire, 1996), p. 58).

Criticisms

See the criticism section of the main General Semantics article General Semantics is a school of thought founded by Alfred Korzybski in about 1933 in response to his observations that most people had difficulty defining human and social discussions and problems and could almost never predictably resolve them into elements that were responsive to successful intervention or correction. ...

Impact

Korzybski's work influenced Gestalt Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, and Neuro-linguistic programming (especially the Meta model). As reported in the Third Edition of Science and Sanity, The U.S. Army in World War II used his system to treat battle fatigue in Europe under the supervision of Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, who also became the psychiatrist in charge of the Nazi prizoners at Nuremberg. Other individuals influenced by Korzybski include Kenneth Burke, William S. Burroughs, Frank Herbert, Albert Ellis, Gregory Bateson, Buckminster Fuller, Douglas Engelbart, Stuart Chase,Alvin Toffler, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, A. E. van Vogt, Robert Anton Wilson, entertainer Steve Allen, and Tommy Hall (lyricist for the 13th Floor Elevators); and scientists such as William Alanson White (psychiatry), physicist P. W. Bridgman, and researcher W. Horsley Gantt (a former student and colleague of Pavlov). He also influenced the Belgian surrealist writer of comics Jan Bucquoy in the seventh part of the comics series Jaunes: Labyrinthe, with explicit reference in the plot to Korzybski's "the map is not the territory." Gestalt Therapy is a psychotherapy which focuses on here-and-now experience and personal responsibility. ... Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is an active-directive, solution-oriented therapy which focuses on resolving cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems in clients, originally developed by the American psychotherapist Albert Ellis. ... // Frogs into Princes by Bandler and Grinder introduced NLP. Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a personal development system developed in the early 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, in association with Gregory Bateson. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Kenneth Burke (May 5, 1897â€“November 19, 1993) was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. ... William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914) - August 2, 1997), more commonly known as William S. Burroughs (pronounced ), was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. ... Frank Patrick Herbert (October 8, 1920 â€“ February 11, 1986) was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904â€“4 July 1980) was a British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. ... Richard Buckminster â€œBuckyâ€ Fuller (July 12, 1895 â€“ July 1, 1983)[1] was an American visionary, designer, architect, poet, author, and inventor. ... Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart (born January 30, 1925 in Oregon) is an American inventor of German descent. ... Alvin Toffler Alvin Toffler (born October 3, 1928) is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communications revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity. ... Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 â€“ May 8, 1988) was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of hard science fiction. ... Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (13 March 1911 â€“ 24 January 1986), better known as L. Ron Hubbard, was an American science fiction writer,[1][2][3] former United States Navy officer and creator of Dianetics and founder of the Church of Scientology. ... Alfred Elton van Vogt (April 26, 1912 â€“ January 26, 2000) was a Canadian-born science fiction author who was one of the most prolific, yet complex, writers of the mid-twentieth century Golden Age of the genre. ... Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (January 18, 1932 â€“ January 11, 2007) was a prolific American novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist, anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher. ... Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (December 26, 1921 â€“ October 30, 2000) was an American musician, comedian and writer instrumental in innovating the concept of the television talk show. ... The 13th Floor Elevators was a psychedelic rock music group founded in Austin, Texas in late 1965. ... William Alanson White (1870-1937) was an American neurologist and alienist. ... Percy Williams Bridgman (April 21, 1882â€“August 20, 1961) was an American physicist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures. ... Ivan Pavlov Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (September 14, 1849 - February 27, 1936) was a Russian physiologist who first described the phenomenon now known as conditioning in experiments with dogs. ... Surrealism is an artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious. ... Jan Bucquoy (b. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

In part the General Semantics tradition was upheld by Samuel I. Hayakawa, who did have a falling out with Korzybski. When asked over what, Hayakawa is said to have replied: "Words". Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906-February 27, 1992) was an English professor and academic who served as a United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983. ...

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Alfred Korzybski

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External links

Institute of General Semantics
Alfred Korzybski and Gestalt Therapy Website

Contents

Early life and career GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");