The term General Semantics refers to a non-Aristotelian educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) during the years 1919 to 1933. General Semantics stands distinct from semantics, a different subject. The name technically refers to the study of what Korzybski called "semantic reactions", or reactions of the whole human organism in its environment to some event — any event, not just perceiving a human-made symbol — in respect of that event's meaning. However, people most commonly use the name to mean the particular system of semantic reactions that Korzybski called the most useful for human survival, i.e. delayed reactions as opposed to "signal reactions" (immediate, unthinking ones).
Korzybski described the central goal of General Semantics as developing in its practitioners what he called a "consciousness of abstracting", or an awareness of the map/territory distinction and of how information gets deleted/distorted in the linguistic and other representations we use. Korzybski considered sporadic and intellectual understanding of these concepts insufficient, rather that humans achieve full sanity only when the consciousness of abstracting becomes constant and a matter of reflex.
Many General Semantics practitioners view its techniques as a kind of self-defense kit against manipulative semantic distortions routinely promulgated by advertising, politics, and religion, as well as those found in self-deception.
Viewed philosophically, some consider General Semantics as a form of applied conceptualism that emphasizes the degree to which human experience gets filtered and mediated by contingent features of human sensory organs, the human nervous system, and human linguistic constructions.
The most important premise of General Semantics has been succinctly expressed as "The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined". While Aristotle 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 possibility of describing such an essence. The non-Aristotelian nature of General Semantics represents an evolution in human evaluative orientation much as non-Euclidean geometry represents an evolution in mathematical representation of spacial relationships.
Much of General Semantics consists of training techniques and reminders intended to break mental habits that impede dealing with reality. Three of the most important reminders are expressed here by the shorthand "Null-A, Null-I, and Null-E".
The underlying purpose of these reminders is both to adjust our conceptual maps better to the territory of reality and to keep us reminded of the limitations of all maps. Non-Aristotelian, in this particular case, refers to the use of non-Aristotelian logic rather than the aforementioned philosophical disagreement. However, Korzybski saw these as linked. The complex nature of the objects we interact with means that reasoning from "essence" or definitions will often lead us astray. This creates uncertainty, which general semantics links to the use of non-Aristotelian logic.
His major work was Science and Sanity, an Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, published in 1933. A third book of his writings, Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings 1920-1950, was published in 1990.
Two major groups were formed in the United States to promote the system: the Institute of General Semantics, in 1938, and the International Society for General Semantics, in 1943. In 2003, the two groups merged into one organization, now called the Institute of General Semantics, with headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. There are also a New York Society for General Semantics, a European Society for General Semantics, and an Australian Society for General Semantics.
During the period of the 1940s and 1950s, general semantics entered the idiom of science fiction, most notably through the works of A. E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A and its sequels, and Robert A. Heinlein, Gulf. 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 and others; they have since shown a tendency to reappear (often without attribution) in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and Robert Anton Wilson.
In 1952, General Semantics was pilloried in Martin Gardner's influential book, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. L. Ron Hubbard claimed that his work was based partly on general semantics, but the compliment was not returned. Writing in Etc: A Review of General Semantics, in the fourth quarter of 1951, Hayakawa said, "The lure of the pseudo-scientific vocabulary and promises of Dianetics cannot but condemn thousands who are beginning to emerge from scientific illiteracy to a continuation of their susceptibility to word-magic and semantic hash.
Under the supervision of psychiatrist Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, U.S. medics in World War II used General Semantics to treat over 7,000 cases of battlefield neuroses in the European theater. Kelley is quoted in the preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity. The development of neuro-linguistic programming owes debts to general semantics.
General Semantics has continued to exert some influence in popular psychology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and education. Usually because of the efforts of individual teachers, such as Drs. Michael Wapner and Chris Aable at CSULA, it has been taught at various times and places in high schools and universities in the U.S.; but in general, the system has had no consistent home in academia.
Popular acceptance has likewise been very limited. As of 2005, the reputation of General Semantics has yet to recover from the damage Martin Gardner did to it.
Korzybski's concept of "silence on the objective level" and his insistence on consciousness of abstracting are parallel to some central ideas in Zen Buddhism. Korzybski is not recorded to have acknowledged any influence from this quarter, but he formulated General Semantics during the same years that the first popularizations of Zen were becoming part of the intellectual currency of educated English-speakers. On the other hand, later Zen-popularizer Alan Watts has been influenced by ideas from General Semantics.
Although he appears to have misunderstood or altered some of the basics of GS (General Semantics), L. Ron Hubbard is widely thought to have used the theory in his creation of Dianetics; this in turn introduced General Semantics to a wider audience in the early 1950s, including popular science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, personal growth theorist Harvey Jackins and his movement Re-evaluation Counseling and movements like Gestalt therapy. The founders of these movements did not themselves credit Korzybski for their ideas.
Albert Ellis, who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy, acknowledges influence from general semantics. The conceptually related cognitive therapy, developed by psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck, formulates a program that could have been taken directly from the declared intentions of GS - cognitive therapy is rapidly developing into the most successful treatment of the more common psychological problems, thereby also validating the corresponding concepts of GS.
Martin Gardner seems to suggest that proponents of general semantics violate their own rules about withholding judgement, following the scientific method, and replacing dogmatic belief with various degrees of probability. Gardner also wrote of Korzybski that he "never tired of knocking over 'Aristotelian' habits of thought, in spite of the fact that what he called Aristotelian was a straw structure which bore almost no resemblance to the Greek philosopher's manner of thinking."
However, in the preface to the first edition of his book Science and Sanity - in 1933, more than twenty years before Gardner's criticism - Korzybski wrote the following:
The beginning of Chapter VII quotes A.N. Whitehead as saying,
In response to the charge of unscientific behavior, general-semanticists like Bruce Kodish and Kenneth G. Johnson point to various scientific studies that they say appear to support Korzybski's claims.
Martin Gardner and others cite an essay in Max Black's Language and Philosophy as the "definitive critique of general semantics". However, Kodish and others argue that Black's criticisms stem from misunderstandings of Science and Sanity (see references with external link to Kodish).
Black repeats the charge that Korzybski misrepresents Aristotle. He also seems to argue that Korzybski cannot prove the existence of an external world. A symbol of this external "event" or "scientific object" appears in the Structural Differential. Black views this as a contradiction, since Korzybski would say that our statements about this object derive in part from our nervous systems. Finally, Black claims "Korzybski holds the view that abstraction consists in 'leaving out details'," (p. 243) and says he ignores the brain's active role. Kodish replies that we have good reason to focus on this "leaving out", and that Black mistakes a practical concern for a definition.
Korzybski felt that his critics often confused their characterizations of what he said with what he said. His response to them was: "I said what I said. I did not say what I did not say."
The term General Semantics refers to a non-Aristotelian educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) during the years 1919 to 1933. General Semantics stands distinct from semantics, a different subject. The name technically refers to the study of what Korzybski called "semantic reactions", or reactions of the whole human organism in its environment to some event — any event, not just perceiving a human-made symbol — in respect of that event's meaning. However, people most commonly use the name to mean the particular system of semantic reactions that Korzybski called the most useful for human survival, i.e. delayed reactions as opposed to "signal reactions" (immediate, unthinking ones).
Korzybski described the central goal of General Semantics as developing in its practitioners what he called a "consciousness of abstracting", or an awareness of the map/territory distinction and of how information gets deleted/distorted in the linguistic and other representations we use. Korzybski considered sporadic and intellectual understanding of these concepts insufficient, rather that humans achieve full sanity only when the consciousness of abstracting becomes constant and a matter of reflex.
Many General Semantics practitioners view its techniques as a kind of self-defense kit against manipulative semantic distortions routinely promulgated by advertising, politics, and religion, as well as those found in self-deception.
Viewed philosophically, some consider General Semantics as a form of applied conceptualism that emphasizes the degree to which human experience gets filtered and mediated by contingent features of human sensory organs, the human nervous system, and human linguistic constructions.
The most important premise of General Semantics has been succinctly expressed as "The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined". While Aristotle 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 possibility of describing such an essence. The non-Aristotelian nature of General Semantics represents an evolution in human evaluative orientation much as non-Euclidean geometry represents an evolution in mathematical representation of spacial relationships.
Much of General Semantics consists of training techniques and reminders intended to break mental habits that impede dealing with reality. Three of the most important reminders are expressed here by the shorthand "Null-A, Null-I, and Null-E".
The underlying purpose of these reminders is both to adjust our conceptual maps better to the territory of reality and to keep us reminded of the limitations of all maps. Non-Aristotelian, in this particular case, refers to the use of non-Aristotelian logic rather than the aforementioned philosophical disagreement. However, Korzybski saw these as linked. The complex nature of the objects we interact with means that reasoning from "essence" or definitions will often lead us astray. This creates uncertainty, which general semantics links to the use of non-Aristotelian logic.
His major work was Science and Sanity, an Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, published in 1933. A third book of his writings, Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings 1920-1950, was published in 1990.
Two major groups were formed in the United States to promote the system: the Institute of General Semantics, in 1938, and the International Society for General Semantics, in 1943. In 2003, the two groups merged into one organization, now called the Institute of General Semantics, with headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. There are also a New York Society for General Semantics, a European Society for General Semantics, and an Australian Society for General Semantics.
During the period of the 1940s and 1950s, general semantics entered the idiom of science fiction, most notably through the works of A. E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A and its sequels, and Robert A. Heinlein, Gulf. 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 and others; they have since shown a tendency to reappear (often without attribution) in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and Robert Anton Wilson.
In 1952, General Semantics was pilloried in Martin Gardner's influential book, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. L. Ron Hubbard claimed that his work was based partly on general semantics, but the compliment was not returned. Writing in Etc: A Review of General Semantics, in the fourth quarter of 1951, Hayakawa said, "The lure of the pseudo-scientific vocabulary and promises of Dianetics cannot but condemn thousands who are beginning to emerge from scientific illiteracy to a continuation of their susceptibility to word-magic and semantic hash.
Under the supervision of psychiatrist Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, U.S. medics in World War II used General Semantics to treat over 7,000 cases of battlefield neuroses in the European theater. Kelley is quoted in the preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity. The development of neuro-linguistic programming owes debts to general semantics.
General Semantics has continued to exert some influence in popular psychology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and education. Usually because of the efforts of individual teachers, such as Drs. Michael Wapner and Chris Aable at CSULA, it has been taught at various times and places in high schools and universities in the U.S.; but in general, the system has had no consistent home in academia.
Popular acceptance has likewise been very limited. As of 2005, the reputation of General Semantics has yet to recover from the damage Martin Gardner did to it.
Korzybski's concept of "silence on the objective level" and his insistence on consciousness of abstracting are parallel to some central ideas in Zen Buddhism. Korzybski is not recorded to have acknowledged any influence from this quarter, but he formulated General Semantics during the same years that the first popularizations of Zen were becoming part of the intellectual currency of educated English-speakers. On the other hand, later Zen-popularizer Alan Watts has been influenced by ideas from General Semantics.
Although he appears to have misunderstood or altered some of the basics of GS (General Semantics), L. Ron Hubbard is widely thought to have used the theory in his creation of Dianetics; this in turn introduced General Semantics to a wider audience in the early 1950s, including popular science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, personal growth theorist Harvey Jackins and his movement Re-evaluation Counseling and movements like Gestalt therapy. The founders of these movements did not themselves credit Korzybski for their ideas.
Albert Ellis, who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy, acknowledges influence from general semantics. The conceptually related cognitive therapy, developed by psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck, formulates a program that could have been taken directly from the declared intentions of GS - cognitive therapy is rapidly developing into the most successful treatment of the more common psychological problems, thereby also validating the corresponding concepts of GS.
Martin Gardner seems to suggest that proponents of general semantics violate their own rules about withholding judgement, following the scientific method, and replacing dogmatic belief with various degrees of probability. Gardner also wrote of Korzybski that he "never tired of knocking over 'Aristotelian' habits of thought, in spite of the fact that what he called Aristotelian was a straw structure which bore almost no resemblance to the Greek philosopher's manner of thinking."
However, in the preface to the first edition of his book Science and Sanity - in 1933, more than twenty years before Gardner's criticism - Korzybski wrote the following:
The beginning of Chapter VII quotes A.N. Whitehead as saying,
In response to the charge of unscientific behavior, general-semanticists like Bruce Kodish and Kenneth G. Johnson point to various scientific studies that they say appear to support Korzybski's claims.
Martin Gardner and others cite an essay in Max Black's Language and Philosophy as the "definitive critique of general semantics". However, Kodish and others argue that Black's criticisms stem from misunderstandings of Science and Sanity (see references with external link to Kodish).
Black repeats the charge that Korzybski misrepresents Aristotle. He also seems to argue that Korzybski cannot prove the existence of an external world. A symbol of this external "event" or "scientific object" appears in the Structural Differential. Black views this as a contradiction, since Korzybski would say that our statements about this object derive in part from our nervous systems. Finally, Black claims "Korzybski holds the view that abstraction consists in 'leaving out details'," (p. 243) and says he ignores the brain's active role. Kodish replies that we have good reason to focus on this "leaving out", and that Black mistakes a practical concern for a definition.
Korzybski felt that his critics often confused their characterizations of what he said with what he said. His response to them was: "I said what I said. I did not say what I did not say."
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