General semantics is concerned with how events translate to perceptions, how they are further modified by the names and labels we apply to them, and how we might gain a measure of control over our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. Proponents characterize general semantics as an antidote to certain kinds of delusional thought patterns in which incomplete and possibly warped mental constructs are projected onto the world and treated as reality itself. After partial launches under the names ''human engineering'' and ''humanology'', Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) fully launched the program as ''general semantics'' in 1933 with the publication of ''Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics''. In ''Science and Sanity'', general semantics is presented as both a theoretical and a practical system whose adoption can reliably alter human behavior in the direction of greater sanity. In the 1947 preface to the third edition of ''Science and Sanity'', Korzybski wrote: "We ''need not'' blind ourselves with the old dogma that 'human nature cannot be changed', for we find that it ''can be changed''." However, in the opinion of a majority of psychiatrists, the tenets and practices of general semantics are not an effective way of treating patients with psychological or mental illnesses. While Korzybski considered his program to be empirically based and to strictly follow the scientific method, general semantics has been described as veering into the domain of

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...

. Starting around 1940, university English professor S. I. Hayakawa (1906–1992), speech professor

Wendell Johnson Wendell Johnson (April 16, 1906 – August 29, 1965) was an American psychologist, author and was a proponent of general semantics (or GS). He was born in Roxbury, Kansas and died in Iowa City, Iowa where most of his life's work was based. The ...

, speech professor Irving J. Lee, and others assembled elements of general semantics into a package suitable for incorporation into mainstream communications curricula. The

Institute of General Semantics The Institute of General Semantics (IGS) is a not-for-profit corporation established in 1938 by Alfred Korzybski, to support research and publication on the topic of general semantics. The Institute publishes Korzybski's writings, including the s ...

, which Korzybski and co-workers founded in 1938, continues today. General semantics as a movement has waned considerably since the 1950s, although many of its ideas live on in other movements, such as

media literacy Media literacy is an expanded conceptualization of literacy that includes the ability to access and analyze media messages as well as create, reflect and take action, using the power of information and communication to make a difference in the w ...

neuro-linguistic programming Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book ''The Structure of Magic I''. NLP claims that th ...

and

rational emotive behavior therapy Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is an active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy, the aim of which is to resolve emotional and behavioral prob ...

Overview

"Identification" and "the silent level"

In the 1946 "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram, Kendig, M., "Alfred Korzybski's 'An Extensional Analysis of the Process of Abstracting from an Electro-Colloidal Non-Aristotelian Point of View.'" ''General Semantics Bulletin,'' Autumn–Winter 1950–51, Numbers Four & Five. Institute of General Semantics, Lakeville, CT. pp. 9–10. the arrows and boxes denote ordered stages in human neuro-evaluative processing that happens in an instant. Although newer knowledge in biology has more sharply defined what the text in these 1946 boxes labels "electro-colloidal", the diagram remains, as Korzybski wrote in his last published paper in 1950, "satisfactory for our purpose of explaining briefly the most general and important points".Blake, Robert R. and Glenn V. Ramsey, editors (1951). ''Perception: An Approach to Personality''. New York: Ronald Press, pp. 170–205; chapter 7: "The Role of Language in the Perceptual Process" by Alfred Korzybski, p. 172. General semantics postulates that most people "identify," or fail to differentiate the serial stages or "levels" within their own neuro-evaluative processing. "Most people," Korzybski wrote, "''identify in value'' levels I, II, III, and IV and react ''as if'' our verbalizations about the first three levels were 'it.' Whatever we may say something 'is' obviously ''is not'' the 'something' on the silent levels." G semantics1946model

By making it a 'mental' habit to find and keep one's bearings among the ordered stages, general semantics training seeks to sharpen internal orientation much as a GPS device may sharpen external orientation. Once trained, general semanticists affirm, a person will act, respond, and make decisions more appropriate to any given set of happenings. Although producing saliva constitutes an appropriate response when lemon juice drips onto the tongue, a person has inappropriately identified when an imagined lemon or the word "l–e–m–o–n" triggers a salivation response. "Once we differentiate, differentiation becomes the denial of identity," Korzybski wrote in ''Science and Sanity''. "Once we discriminate among the objective and verbal levels, we learn 'silence' on the unspeakable objective levels, and so introduce a most beneficial neurological 'delay'—engage the cortex to perform its natural function." British-American philosopher

Max Black Max Black (24 February 1909 – 27 August 1988) was an Azerbaijani-born British-American philosopher who was a leading figure in analytic philosophy in the years after World War II. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philo ...

, an influential critic of general semantics, called this neurological delay the "central aim" of general semantics training, "so that in responding to verbal or nonverbal stimuli, we are aware of what it is that we are doing". In the 21st century, the physiology underlying identification and the neurological delay is thought to involve

autoassociative memory Autoassociative memory, also known as auto-association memory or an autoassociation network, is any type of memory that is able to retrieve a piece of data from only a tiny sample of itself. They are very effective in de-noising or removing interfer ...

, a neural mechanism crucial to intelligence. Briefly explained, autoassociative memory retrieves previously stored representations that most closely conform to any current incoming pattern (level II in the general semantics diagram) arriving from the senses. According to the

memory-prediction model The memory-prediction framework is a theory of brain function created by Jeff Hawkins and described in his 2004 book ''On Intelligence''. This theory concerns the role of the mammalian neocortex and its associations with the hippocampi and the t ...

for intelligence, if the stored representations resolve the arriving patterns, this constitutes "understanding", and brain activity shifts from evaluation to triggering motor responses. When the retrieved representations do ''not'' sufficiently resolve newly arrived patterns, evaluating persists, engaging higher layers of the cortex in an ongoing pursuit of resolution. The additional time required for signals to travel up and down the cortical hierarchy constitutes what general semantics calls a "beneficial neurological delay".

Abstracting and consciousness of abstracting

Identification prevents what general semantics seeks to promote: the additional cortical processing experienced as a delay. Korzybski called his remedy for identification "consciousness of

abstracting An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When used, an abstract always ...

." The term "abstracting" occurs ubiquitously in ''Science and Sanity.'' Korzybski's use of the term is somewhat unusual and requires study to understand his meaning. He discussed the problem of identification in terms of "confusions of orders of abstractions" and "lack of consciousness of abstracting". To be conscious of abstracting is to differentiate among the "levels" described above; levels II–IV being abstractions of level I (whatever level I "is"—all we really get are abstractions). The techniques Korzybski prescribed to help a person develop consciousness of abstracting he called "extensional devices".

Extensional devices

Satisfactory accounts of general semantics extensional devices can be found easily. This article seeks to explain briefly only the "indexing" devices. Suppose you teach in a school or university. Students enter your classroom on the first day of a new term, and, if you identify these new students to a memory association retrieved by your brain, you under-engage your powers of observation and your cortex. Indexing makes explicit a differentiating of students_{this term} from students_{prior terms}. You survey the new students, and indexing explicitly differentiates student₁ from student₂ from student₃, etc. Suppose you recognize one student—call her Anna—from a prior course in which Anna either excelled or did poorly. Again, you escape identification by your indexed awareness that Anna_{this term, this course} is different from Anna_{that term, that course}. Not identifying, you both expand and sharpen your apprehension of "students" with an awareness rooted in fresh silent-level observations.

Language as a core concern

Autoassociative memory Autoassociative memory, also known as auto-association memory or an autoassociation network, is any type of memory that is able to retrieve a piece of data from only a tiny sample of itself. They are very effective in de-noising or removing interfer ...

in the

describes neural operations in mammalian brains generally. A special circumstance for humans arises with the introduction of language components, both as fresh stimuli and as stored representations. Language considerations figure prominently in general semantics, and three language and communications specialists who embraced general semantics, university professors and authors Hayakawa,

and

Neil Postman Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers, mobile devices, and cruise control in cars, and was critical ...

, played major roles in framing general semantics, especially for non-readers of ''Science and Sanity''.

The science

Many recognized specialists in the knowledge areas where Korzybski claimed to have anchored general semantics—biology,

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...

, mathematics, neurology, physics, psychiatry, etc.—supported his work in his lifetime, including Cassius J. Keyser, C. B. Bridges, W. E. Ritter, P. W. Bridgman, G. E. Coghill, William Alanson White, Clarence B. Farrar, David Fairchild, and

Erich Kähler Erich Kähler (; 16 January 1906 – 31 May 2000) was a German mathematician with wide-ranging interests in geometry and mathematical physics, who laid important mathematical groundwork for algebraic geometry and for string theory. Education an ...

. Korzybski wrote in the preface to the third edition of ''Science and Sanity'' (1947) that general semantics "turned out to be an empirical natural science". But the type of existence, if any, of

universals In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...

and

abstract objects In metaphysics, the distinction between abstract and concrete refers to a divide between two types of entities. Many philosophers hold that this difference has fundamental metaphysical significance. Examples of concrete objects include plants, hum ...

is an issue of serious debate within metaphysical philosophy. So

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...

summed up general semantics as "some hypothetical neurology fortified with dogmatic metaphysics".Black, Max. ''Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method''. p. 246. And in 1952, two years after Korzybski died, American skeptic

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lew ...

wrote, " orzybski'swork moves into the realm of cultism and pseudo-science."Gardner, Martin (1957). ''Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science''. New York: Dover Publications. ch. 23, pp. 280–291. Former

executive director Steve Stockdale has compared GS to

yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciou ...

. "First, I'd say that there is little if any benefit to be gained by just ''knowing'' something about general semantics. The benefits come from maintaining an awareness of the principles and attitudes that are derived from GS and applying them as they are needed. You can sort of compare general semantics to yoga in that respect... knowing about yoga is okay, but to benefit from yoga you have to ''do'' yoga." Stockdale: "First, I'd say that there is little if any benefit to be gained by just 'knowing' something about general semantics. The benefits come from maintaining an awareness of the principles and attitudes that are derived from GS and applying them as they are needed. You can sort of compare general semantics to yoga in that respect... knowing about yoga is okay, but to benefit from yoga you have to 'do' yoga." Reprinted in Stockdale, Steve (2009). ''Here's Something about General Semantics: A Primer for Making Sense of Your World''. Santa Fe, NM: Steve Stockdale. p. 36. Similarly, Kenneth Burke explains Korzybski's kind of semantics contrasting it, in ''A Grammar of Motives'', with a kind of Burkean poetry by saying "''Semantics'' is essentially scientist, an approach to language in terms of knowledge, whereas poetic forms are kinds of action".

History

Early attempts at validation

The First American Congress for General Semantics convened in March 1935 at the Central Washington College of Education in

Ellensburg, Washington Ellensburg is a city in and the county seat of Kittitas County, Washington, United States. It is located just east of the Cascade Range near the junction of Interstate 90 and Interstate 82. The population was 18,666 at the 2020 census. and was ...

. In introductory remarks to the participants, Korzybski said:

General semantics formulates a new experimental branch of natural science, underlying an empirical theory of human evaluations and orientations and involving a definite neurological mechanism, present in all humans. It discovers direct neurological methods for the stimulation of the activities of the human cerebral cortex and the direct introduction of beneficial neurological 'inhibition'....

He added that general semantics "will be judged by experimentation". One paper presented at the congress reported dramatic score improvements for college sophomores on standardized intelligence tests after six weeks of training by methods prescribed in Chapter 29 of ''Science and Sanity.''

Interpretation as semantics

General semantics accumulated only a few early experimental validations. In 1938, economist and writer

Stuart Chase Stuart Chase (March 8, 1888 – November 16, 1985) was an American economist, social theorist, and writer. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His thought was shaped by Henry George, by economic philos ...

praised and popularized Korzybski in ''The Tyranny of Words''. Chase called Korzybski "a pioneer" and described ''Science and Sanity'' as "formulating a genuine science of communication. The term which is coming into use to cover such studies is 'semantics,' matters having to do with signification or meaning." Because Korzybski, in ''Science and Sanity'', had articulated his program using "semantic" as a standalone qualifier on hundreds of pages in constructions like "semantic factors," "semantic disturbances," and especially "semantic reactions," to label the general semantics program "semantics" amounted to only a convenient shorthand. Hayakawa read ''The Tyranny of Words,'' then ''Science and Sanity'', and in 1939 he attended a Korzybski-led workshop conducted at the newly organized

in Chicago. In the introduction to his own '' Language in Action'', a 1941

Book of the Month Club Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members ...

selection, Hayakawa wrote, " orzybski'sprinciples have in one way or another influenced almost every page of this book...." But, Hayakawa followed Chase's lead in interpreting general semantics as making communication its defining concern. When Hayakawa co-founded the Society for General Semantics and its publication ''ETC: A Review of General Semantics'' in 1943—he would continue to edit ''ETC.'' until 1970—Korzybski and his followers at the Institute of General Semantics began to complain that Hayakawa had wrongly coopted general semantics. In 1985, Hayakawa gave this defense to an interviewer: "I wanted to treat general semantics as a subject, in the same sense that there's a scientific concept known as gravitation, which is independent of Isaac Newton. So after a while, you don't talk about Newton anymore; you talk about gravitation. You talk about semantics and not Korzybskian semantics."

Lowered sights

The regimen in the Institute's seminars, greatly expanded as team-taught seminar-workshops starting in 1944, continued to develop following the prescriptions laid down in Chapter XXIX of ''Science and Sanity.'' The

structural differential The structural differential is a physical chart or three-dimensional model illustrating the abstracting processes of the human nervous system. In one form, it appears as a pegboard with tags. Created by Alfred Korzybski, and awarded a U.S. patent ...

, patented by Korzybski in the 1920s, remained among the chief training aids to help students reach "the silent level," a prerequisite for achieving "neurological delay". Innovations in the seminar-workshops included a new "neuro-relaxation" component, led by dancer and Institute editorial secretary Charlotte Schuchardt (1909–2002). But although many people were introduced to general semantics—perhaps the majority through Hayakawa's more limited 'semantics'—superficial lip service seemed more common than the deep internalization that Korzybski and his co-workers at the Institute aimed for. Marjorie Kendig (1892–1981), probably Korzybski's closest co-worker, director of the Institute after his death, and editor of his posthumously published ''Collected Writings: 1920–1950'', wrote in 1968:

I would guess that I have known about 30 individuals who have in some degree adequately, by my standards, mastered this highly general, very simple, very difficult system of orientation and method of evaluating—reversing as it must all our cultural conditioning, neurological canalization, etc.... To me the ''great error'' Korzybski made—and I carried on, financial necessity—and for which we pay the price today in many criticisms, consisted in not restricting ourselves to training very thoroughly ''a very few people'' who would be competent to utilize the discipline in various fields and to train others. We should have done this before encouraging anyone to popularize or spread the word (horrid phrase) in societies for general semantics, by talking ''about'' general semantics instead of learning, using, etc. the methodology to ''change'' our essential epistemological assumptions, premises, etc. (unconscious or conscious), i.e. the ''un''-learning basic to learning to learn.

Yes, large numbers of people do enjoy making a philosophy of general semantics. This saves them the pain of rigorous training so simple and general and limited that it seems obvious when ''said'', yet so difficult.

Successors at the

continued for many years along the founders' path. Stuart Mayper (1916–1997), who studied under

Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the ...

, introduced Popper's principle of

falsifiability Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book '' The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as the cornerstone of a s ...

into the seminar-workshops he led at the Institute starting in 1977. More modest pronouncements gradually replaced Korzybski's claims that general semantics can change human nature and introduce an era of universal human agreement. In 2000, Robert Pula (1928–2004), whose roles at the Institute over three decades included Institute director, editor-in-chief of the Institute's ''General Semantics Bulletin'', and leader of the seminar-workshops, characterized Korzybski's legacy as a "contribution toward the improvement of human evaluating, to the amelioration of human woe...." Hayakawa died in 1992. The Society for General Semantics merged into the Institute of General Semantics in 2003. In 2007, Martin Levinson, president of the Institute's Board of Trustees, teamed with Paul D. Johnston, executive director of the Society at the date of the merger, to teach general semantics with a light-hearted ''Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living''. The Institute currently offers no training workshops. Other institutions supporting or promoting general semantics in the 21st century include the New York Society for General Semantics, the European Society for General Semantics, the Australian General Semantics Society, and the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences (Baroda, India).

The major premises

* ''Non-Aristotelianism'': While

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...

wrote that a true definition gives the essence of the thing (defined in Greek ''to ti ên einai'', literally "the what it was to be"), general semantics denies the existence of such an 'essence'. In this, general semantics purports to represent an evolution in human evaluative orientation. In general semantics, it is always possible to give a ''description'' of empirical facts, but such descriptions remain just that—''descriptions''—which necessarily leave out many aspects of the objective, microscopic, and submicroscopic events they describe. According to general semantics, language, natural or otherwise (including the language called 'mathematics') can be used to ''describe'' the taste of an orange, but one cannot ''give'' the taste of the orange using language alone. According to general semantics, the ''content of all knowledge is structure'', so that language (in general) and science and mathematics (in particular) can provide people with a structural 'map' of empirical facts, but there can be no 'identity', only structural similarity, between the language (map) and the empirical facts as lived through and observed by people as humans-in-environments (including doctrinal and linguistic environments). * ''Time binding'': The human ability to pass information and knowledge from one generation to the next. Korzybski claimed this to be a unique capacity, separating people from animals. This ''distinctly human'' ability for one generation to start where a previous generation left off, is a consequence of the uniquely human ability to move to higher and higher levels of abstraction ''without limit''. Animals may have multiple levels of abstraction, but ''their abstractions must stop at some finite upper limit''; this is not so for humans: humans can have 'knowledge about knowledge', 'knowledge about knowledge about knowledge', etc., without any upper limit. Animals possess knowledge, but each generation of animals does things pretty much in the same way as the previous generation, limited by their neurology and genetic makeup. By contrast, at one time most human societies were hunter-gatherers, but now more advanced means of food production (growing, raising, or buying) predominate. Except for some insects (for example, ants), all animals are still hunter-gatherer species, even though many have existed longer than the human species. For this reason, animals are regarded in general semantics as ''space-binders'' (doing space-binding), and plants, which are usually stationary, as ''energy-binders'' (doing energy-binding). * ''Non-elementalism and non-additivity'': The refusal to separate verbally what cannot be separated empirically, and the refusal to regard such verbal splits as evidence that the 'things' that are verbally split bear an additive relation to one another. For example, space-time cannot empirically be split into 'space' + 'time', a conscious organism (including humans) cannot be split into 'body' + 'mind', etc., therefore, people should never speak of 'space' and 'time' or 'mind' and 'body' in isolation, but always use the terms space-time or mind-body (or other organism-as-a-whole terms). * ''Infinite-valued determinism'': General semantics regards the problem of 'indeterminism vs. determinism' as the failure of pre-modern epistemologies to formulate the issue properly, as the failure to consider or include all factors relevant to a particular prediction, and failure to adjust our languages and linguistic structures to empirical facts. General semantics resolves the issue in favor of determinism of a special kind called 'infinite-valued' determinism which always allows for the possibility that relevant 'causal' factors may be 'left out' at any given date, resulting in, if the issue is not understood at that date, 'indeterminism', which simply indicates that our ability to predict events has broken down, not that the world is 'indeterministic'. General semantics considers all human behavior (including all human decisions) as, in principle, fully determined once all relevant doctrinal and linguistic factors are included in the analysis, regarding theories of 'free will' as failing to include the doctrinal and linguistic environments ''as environments'' in the analysis of human behavior.

Connections to other disciplines

The influence of

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is consi ...

and the

Vienna Circle The Vienna Circle (german: Wiener Kreis) of Logical Empiricism was a group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, ch ...

, and of early operationalists and pragmatists such as

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...

, is particularly clear in the foundational ideas of general semantics. Korzybski himself acknowledged many of these influences. The concept of "silence on the objective level"—attributed to Korzybski and his insistence on consciousness of abstracting—are parallel to some of the central ideas in

Zen Buddhism Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), an ...

. Although Korzybski never acknowledged any influence from this quarter, he formulated general semantics during the same years that the first popularizations of Zen were becoming part of the intellectual currency of educated speakers of English. On the other hand, later Zen-popularizer

Alan Watts Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was an English writer, speaker and self-styled "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Japanese, Chinese and Indian traditions of Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu ...

was influenced by ideas from general semantics. General semantics has survived most profoundly in the cognitive therapies that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s.

Albert Ellis Albert Ellis (September 27, 1913 – July 24, 2007) was an American psychologist and psychotherapist who founded rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT). He held MA and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University, and was certi ...

(1913–2007), who developed

, acknowledged influence from general semantics and delivered the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1991. The

Bruges Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the countr ...

(Belgium) center for solution-focused brief therapy operates under the name Korzybski Institute Training and Research Center. George Kelly, creator of

personal construct psychology Within personality psychology, personal construct theory (PCT) or personal construct psychology (PCP) is a theory of personality and cognition developed by the American psychologist George Kelly in the 1950s.For example: (first published 1955 ...

, was influenced by general semantics.

Fritz Perls Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 – March 14, 1970), better known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychotherapy that he de ...

and

Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decen ...

, founders of Gestalt therapy are said to have been influenced by Korzybski

wrote "People in Quandaries: The Semantics of Personal Adjustment" in 1946, which stands as the first attempt to form a therapy from general semantics.

Ray Solomonoff Ray Solomonoff (July 25, 1926 – December 7, 2009) was the inventor of algorithmic probability, his General Theory of Inductive Inference (also known as Universal Inductive Inference),Samuel Rathmanner and Marcus Hutter. A philosophical treatise ...

(1926–2009) was influenced by Korzybski. Solomonoff was the inventor of

algorithmic probability In algorithmic information theory, algorithmic probability, also known as Solomonoff probability, is a mathematical method of assigning a prior probability to a given observation. It was invented by Ray Solomonoff in the 1960s. It is used in induc ...

, and founder of

algorithmic information theory Algorithmic information theory (AIT) is a branch of theoretical computer science that concerns itself with the relationship between computation and information of computably generated objects (as opposed to stochastically generated), such as str ...

(

Kolmogorov complexity In algorithmic information theory (a subfield of computer science and mathematics), the Kolmogorov complexity of an object, such as a piece of text, is the length of a shortest computer program (in a predetermined programming language) that produ ...

). Another scientist influenced by Korzybski (verbal testimony) is Paul Vitanyi (born 1944), a scientist in the theory of computation. During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, general semantics entered the idiom of

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

. Notable examples include the works of A. E. van Vogt, ''

The World of Null-A ''The World of Null-A'', sometimes written ''The World of Ā'', is a 1948 science fiction novel by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt. It was originally published as a three-part serial in 1945 in ''Astounding Stories''. It incorporates conc ...

'' and its sequels. General semantics appear also in Robert A. Heinlein's work, especially ''

Gulf A gulf is a large inlet from the ocean into the landmass, typically with a narrower opening than a bay, but that is not observable in all geographic areas so named. The term gulf was traditionally used for large highly-indented navigable bodie ...

''. Bernard Wolfe drew on general semantics in his 1952 science fiction novel ''Limbo''. Frank Herbert's novels ''

Dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, f ...

'' and '' Whipping Star'' are also indebted to general semantics. The ideas of general semantics became a sufficiently important part of the shared intellectual toolkit of genre science fiction to merit parody by

Damon Knight Damon Francis Knight (September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002) was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He is the author of " To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for ''The Twilight Zone''.Stanyard, ''Dimensions Behind t ...

and others; they have since shown a tendency to reappear in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and

Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilso ...

. In 2008, John Wright extended van Vogt's Null-A series with ''Null-A Continuum''.

William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

references Korzybski's time binding principle in his essay

The Electronic Revolution ''The Electronic Revolution'' is an essay collection by William S. Burroughs that was first published in 1970 by Expanded Media Editions in West Germany. A second edition, published in 1971 in Cambridge, England, contained additional French transl ...

, and elsewhere. Henry Beam Piper explicitly mentioned general semantics in ''Murder in the Gunroom'', and its principles, such as awareness of the limitations of knowledge, are apparent in his later work. A fictional rendition of the ''Institute of General Semantics'' appears in the 1965 French science fiction film, Alphaville, directed by

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...

, founder of New York University's media ecology program in 1971, edited ''ETC.: A Review of General Semantics'' from 1976 to 1986. Postman's student

Lance Strate Lance A. Strate (born September 17, 1957) is an American writer and professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University. He was the 2015 Margaret E. and Paul F. Harron Endowed Chair in Communication at Villanova University, and in 20 ...

, a co-founder of the Media Ecology Association, served as executive director of the Institute of General Semantics from 2007 to 2010.

Notes

wrote: "This seems to me a revolutionary book on how to transcend prejudices, evade the currently fashionable lunacies, open yourself to new perceptions, new empathy and even new ideas, free your living total brain from the limits of your dogmatic verbal 'mind', and generally wake up and smell the bodies of dead children and other innocents piling up everywhere. In a time of rising rage and terror, we need this as badly as a city with plague needs vaccines and antibiotics. If I had the money I'd send a copy to every delegate at the UN." *''Trance-Formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis'' by Richard Bandler and

John Grinder John Thomas Grinder Jr. ( ; born January 10, 1940) is an American linguist, author, management consultant, trainer and speaker. Grinder is credited with co-creating neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) with Richard Bandler. He is co-director of Qu ...

, (1981). One of the important principles—also widely used in political propaganda—discussed in this book is that trance induction uses a language of pure process and lets the listener fill in all the ''specific content'' from their own personal experience. E.g. the hypnotist might say "imagine you are sitting in a very comfortable chair in a room painted your favorite color" but not "imagine you are sitting in a very comfortable chair in a room painted red, your favorite color" because then the listener might think "wait a second, red is not my favorite color". *The work of the scholar of political communication

Murray Edelman Murray Jacob Edelman (1919 – January 26, 2001) was an American political scientist known for his research on symbolic politics and political psychology. Career Edelman received a bachelor's degree in social sciences from Bucknell University in ...

(1919–2001), starting with his seminal book ''The Symbolic Uses of Politics'' (1964), continuing with ''Politics as symbolic action: mass arousal and quiescience'' (1971), ''Political Language: Words that succeed and policies that fail'' (1977), ''Constructing the Political Spectacle'' (1988) and ending with his last book ''The Politics of Misinformation'' (2001) can be viewed as an exploration of the deliberate manipulation and obfuscation of the map-territory distinction for political purposes. *''Logic and contemporary rhetoric: the use of reason in everyday life'' by Howard Kahane (d. 2001). (Wadsworth: First edition 1971, sixth edition 1992, tenth edition 2005 with Nancy Cavender.) Highly readable guide to the rhetoric of clear thinking, frequently updated with examples of the opposite drawn from contemporary U.S. media sources. *''Doing Physics : how physicists take hold of the world'' by Martin H. Krieger, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. A "cultural phenomenology of doing physics". The General Semantics connection is the relation to Korzybski's original motivation of trying to identify key features of the successes of mathematics and the physical sciences that could be extended into everyday thinking and social organization. *''Metaphors We Live By'' by

George Lakoff George Philip Lakoff (; born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguist and philosopher, best known for his thesis that people's lives are significantly influenced by the conceptual metaphors they use to explain complex phenomena. The con ...

and Mark Johnson, (1980). *''Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought'' by

and Mark Johnson, (1997). *''The Art of Asking Questions'' by Stanley L. Payne, (1951) This book is a short handbook-style discussion of how the honest pollster should ask questions to find out what people actually think without leading them, but the same information could be used to slant a poll to get a predetermined answer. Payne notes that the effect of asking a question in different ways or in different contexts can be much larger than the effect of sampling bias, which is the error estimate usually given for a poll. E.g. (from the book) if you ask people "should government go into debt?" the majority will answer "No", but if you ask "Corporations have the right to issue bonds. Should governments also have the right to issue bonds?" the majority will answer "Yes".

Related books

*''The art of awareness; a textbook on general semantics'' by , Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown Co., 1966, 1973, 1978; , 1996. *''Crazy talk, stupid talk: how we defeat ourselves by the way we talk and what to do about it'' by

, Delacorte Press, 1976. All of Postman's books are informed by his study of General Semantics (Postman was editor of ''ETC.'' from 1976 to 1986) but this book is his most explicit and detailed commentary on the use and misuse of language as a tool for thought. * ''Developing sanity in human affairs'' edited by Susan Presby Kodish and Robert P. Holston, Greenwood Press, Westport Connecticut, copyright 1998,

Hofstra University Hofstra University is a private university in Hempstead, New York. It is Long Island's largest private university. Hofstra originated in 1935 as an extension of New York University (NYU) under the name Nassau College – Hofstra Memorial of New ...

. A collection of papers on the subject of general semantics. * ''Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Third Edition''. by Bruce I. Kodish and Susan Presby Kodish. Pasadena, CA: Extensional Publishing, 2011. *''General Semantics in Psychotherapy: Selected Writings on Methods Aiding Therapy'', edited by Isabel Caro and Charlotte Schuchardt Read, Institute of General Semantics, 2002. *''Language habits in human affairs; an introduction to General Semantics'' by Irving J. Lee, Harper and Brothers, 1941. Still in print from the Institute of General Semantics. On a similar level to Hayakawa. *''The language of wisdom and folly; background readings in semantics'' edited by Irving J. Lee, Harper and Row, 1949. Was in print (ca. 2000) from the International Society of General Semantics—now merged with the Institute of General Semantics. A selection of essays and short excerpts from different authors on linguistic themes emphasized by General Semantics—without reference to Korzybski, except for an essay by him. *"Language Revision by Deletion of Absolutisms," by Allen Walker Read. Paper presented at the ninth annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, Bloomington, IN, 13 October 1984. Published in ETC: A Review of General Semantics. V42n1, Spring 1985, pp. 7–12. *Living With Change, Wendell Johnson, Harper Collins, 1972. *''Mathsemantics: making numbers talk sense'' by Edward MacNeal, HarperCollins, 1994. Penguin paperback 1995. Explicit General Semantics combined with numeracy education (along the lines of

John Allen Paulos John Allen Paulos (born July 4, 1945) is an American professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has gained fame as a writer and speaker on mathematics and the importance of mathematical literacy. Paulos write ...

's books) and simple statistical and mathematical modelling, influenced by MacNeal's work as an airline transportation consultant. Discusses the fallacy of Single Instance thinking in statistical situations. *''Operational philosophy: integrating knowledge and action'' by Anatol Rapoport, New York: Wiley (1953, 1965). *''People in Quandaries: the semantics of personal adjustment'' by

, 1946—still in print from the Institute of General Semantics. Insightful book about the application of General Semantics to psychotherapy; was an acknowledged influence on Richard Bandler and John Grinder in their formulation of

Neuro-Linguistic Programming Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book ''The Structure of Magic I''. NLP claims that th ...

. *''Semantics'' by Anatol Rapoport, Crowell, 1975. Includes both general semantics along the lines of Hayakawa, Lee, and Postman and more technical (mathematical and philosophical) material. A valuable survey. Rapoport's autobiography ''Certainties and Doubts : A Philosophy of Life'' (Black Rose Books, 2000) gives some of the history of the General Semantics movement as he saw it. *''Your Most Enchanted Listener'' by Wendell Johnson, Harper, 1956. Your most enchanted listener is yourself, of course. Similar material as in ''People in Quandaries'' but considerably briefer.

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:General Semantics 1933 introductions Concepts in epistemology Concepts in metaphysics Human communication Philosophy of education Philosophy of language Philosophy of mind Philosophy of science