Key People:
Alfred Korzybski
Related Topics:
semantics

general semantics, a philosophy of language-meaning that was developed by Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950), a Polish-American scholar, and furthered by S.I. Hayakawa, Wendell Johnson, and others; it is the study of language as a representation of reality. Korzybski’s theory was intended to improve the habits of response to environment. Drawing upon such varied disciplines as relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and mathematical logic, Korzybski and his followers sought a scientific, non-Aristotelian basis for clear understanding of the differences between symbol (word) and reality (referent) and the ways in which words themselves can influence (or manipulate) and limit human ability to think.

A major emphasis of general semantics has been in practical training, in methods for establishing better habits of evaluation, e.g., by indexing words, as “man1,” “man2,” and by dating, as “Roosevelt1930,” “Roosevelt1940,” to indicate exactly which man or which stage of time one is referring to.

Korzybski’s major work on general semantics is Science and Sanity (1933; 5th ed., 1994). The Institute of General Semantics (founded 1938) publishes a quarterly, ETC: A Review of General Semantics.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan.

Alfred Korzybski

American philosopher
Also known as: Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski
Quick Facts
In full:
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski
Born:
July 3, 1879, Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire
Died:
March 1, 1950, Sharon, Conn., U.S. (aged 70)
Subjects Of Study:
general semantics
semantics

Alfred Korzybski (born July 3, 1879, Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire—died March 1, 1950, Sharon, Conn., U.S.) was a Polish-born American scientist and philosopher.

During World War I, Korzybski served in the intelligence department of the Russian army general staff and in 1915 was sent on a military mission to the United States and Canada. With the collapse of the tsarist regime in 1917, he remained in the United States to serve as secretary of the French-Polish military mission, later becoming a U.S. citizen.

Korzybski was the originator of general semantics (q.v.), a system of linguistic philosophy that attempts to increase humanity’s capacity to transmit ideas from generation to generation (what Korzybski called man’s “time-binding capacity”) through the study and refinement of ways of using and reacting to language. His best-known work is Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1933), a critique of traditional assumptions about language.

Agathon (centre) greeting guests in "Plato's Symposium" oil on canvas by Anselm Feuerbach, 1869; in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany.
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