GeneralSemantics GSM

http://www..org/general-semantics

Since 1933, individuals from all walks of life and from all over the world
have read, studied and applied the inter-related principles, tools and
formulations that we know as general semantics.

General Semantics applies up-to-date ways of thinking to the challenges of our
daily living. We can describe it as the study of how we

* perceive,
* construct, and
* communicate our life experiences.

.....................................................................

Alfred Korzybski (pronounced "Kahshibski") was born July 3, 1879, in Warsaw,
Poland, to wealthy, aristocratic parents. By his teenage years he could speak
four languages -- Polish, Russian, French and German. He managed his father's
farm before attending the Polytechnic Institute at Warsaw to study chemical
engineering.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when Korzybski was 35, he volunteered
to join the Second Russian Army, where he served as a battlefield intelligence
officer. He was injured three times during the war: first, dislocating his left
hip when his horse was shot and fell on him; later he was shot in the knee;
finally, he injured himself as he attempted to clear a cannon that was
obstructing a muddy road.

In December 1915 he was sent to Canada and the United States as an artillery
expert for the Russian Army. Once in Canada he began studying English, which
became his favorite language and the one in which he would write his major
works.

In 1917 Korzybski moved to New York to supervise the shipping of ammunition to
Russia. When the Russian Army and government collapsed later that year, he
stayed in the United States to continue war efforts on behalf of the French and
Polish armies.

Soon the United States Government hired him to travel the U.S. as a war
lecturer to encourage sale of Liberty bonds.

Korzybski and his wife Shortly after the Armistice, Korzybski met Mira Edgerly,
an American of wide fame as a portrait painter on ivory. They were married two
months later, in January 1919.

His experiences during the war led Korzybski to contemplate the causes of the
periodic bloodbaths that afflicted civilization. Eventually this led him to
ponder the differences between humans and animals. He observed that animals by
nature were mere hunters and gatherers or "space-binders" in their pursuit of
food, whereas humans practiced agriculture, reflecting a human capacity to
anticipate needs, learn from experiences and readily transmit these experiences
as symbols to succeeding generations. He labelled this unique human
behavior "time-binding" and noted that the rate of growth of human knowledge
resembled a geometric (exponential) progression. Korzybski felt that teaching
humans animalistic or mythological theories about themselves helped create and
perpetuate such episodes as the recent war.

Korzybski was encouraged to develop and publish his ideas by friends that
included biologist Jacques Loeb and mathematician Cassius Jackson Keyser (1884-
1945). With considerable editorial assistance from Keyser, Korzybski published
his ideas in 1921 as Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human
Engineering. The first printing of the book sold out in 6 weeks.

Korzybski continued his research into the mechanisms of time-binding, and
attempted a synthesis of the sciences from the standpoint of a theory of human
evaluation. He included the field of psychiatry in his research, and studied
for 2 years with William Alanson White, director of the St. Elizabeth's
Hospital in Washington, D.C.

From 1928 until 1933 Korzybski spent most of his time writing what was to
become his most famous book, "Time-Binding: The General Theory." At the last
minute, however, he changed the name to Science and Sanity: An Introduction to
Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. The new title, Korzybski felt,
made clearer the results of his research. Bridges rarely collapse, Korzybski
noted, because of the power of scientific methods and mathematical languages
that are used to produce them. His book explored means of transferring this
predictability of science-mathematical methods to the everyday behavior of
ordinary people.

"Science and Sanity" contended that humans progressed ("time-binding") largely
as a result of our more flexible nervous systems that were capable of
symbolism. Language allowed us to summarize or generalize our experiences and
pass them on to others, saving others from having to make the same mistakes or
reinvent what had already been discovered.

This linguistic generalizing ability of humans, Korzybski contended, accounted
for our amazing progress over animals, but the misuse of this mechanism
accounted for many of our problems as well.

Just as we need training in how to safely drive a car, Korzybski suggested we
needed training in the use of language to prevent misevaluation of non-verbal
as well as verbal realities. He formulated his law of non-identity, also called
the law of individuality, which states that no two persons, or situations, or
stages of processes are the same in all details. Korzybski noted that we have
fewer words and ideas than experiences, and this tends to lead to the
identification ("confusion") of two or more situations. For example, the
word "apple" is commonly applied to millions of different objects, to
the 'same' object at different times, to scientific events on submicroscopic
levels, to objects of everyday experience, to our mental images, to
illustrations like the one on this page, and even to the combined letters a-p-p-
l-e.

Korzybski developed a training program to teach people how to burst through
their language habits to properly evaluate the unique characteristics of their
daily experiences. His goal was to help people evaluate less by the
implications of their everyday language (by intension) and more by the unique
facts of a situation (by extension).

Korzybski advocated the application of a few mathematical devices to our daily
language, such as indexes (apple1, apple2, apple3 ...) and dates (US1930,
US1940 ...) to encourage a more factual orientation among language users. He
also encouraged the use of more actional, relational terms. Instead of saying
what something "is" we, instead, describe what it does or how it relates to a
greater whole. He also developed visual tools to teach humans to differentiate
between non-verbal and verbal levels, descriptive and inferential levels, et
cetera.

Korzybski with his Structural DifferentialKorzybski felt that to break away
from the limitations of one's daily language we needed new ways of 'thinking.'
He advocated 'thinking' on silent levels in terms of visual images, and he
developed many visual aids for his theories including the Structural
Differential, which in its most detailed form was a '3-dimensional' model of
the differences between the orders of abstraction (see photo at left).
Differences between the orders of abstraction include differences between
verbal and non-verbal levels, between descriptions and inferences, between
descriptions(2) about descriptions(1), between inferences(2) from inferences
(1), between affect(2) about affect(1), between what we see and the external
stimuli themselves, between my abstractions and your abstractions, et cetera.

Korzybski's devices were designed to encourage people to delay their immediate
reactions while they searched for the unique characteristics of a situation and
alternative interpretations. He was trying to link science-mathematical methods
with sanity.

Korzybski explains non-additivityFollowing publication of his book in October,
1933, Korzybski set out to conduct seminars at schools and universities
throughout the country on his theory of proper human evaluation, which he
c