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Alfred Korzybski was born on July 3 , 1879 in Warsaw , Poland , and died on March 1 , 1950 in Lakeville, Connecticut , USA . He is probably best-remembered for developing the theory of General Semantics . EARLY LIFE AND CAREER He came from an Aristocratic family whose members had worked as Mathematicians , Scientists , and Engineers for generations, and he chose to train as an engineer. Korzybski was educated at the class of life. 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. 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." 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 dumb). 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 auxillary 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. 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 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 Noam Chomsky , widely regarded as the father of modern Linguistics has said that "little can be resurrected" from Korzybski's work because it was "based on serious confusion" ''"We don't need Korzybski to tell us that people say alters our perception . And it's not 'confusion of [linguistic] representation with reality,' rather, being swayed by someone's opinion, which is often quite reasonable."'' Chomsky has also commented on Korzybski's criticisms of the use of the verb "to be" ("any proposition containing the word "is" its cognates 'are,' be' etc creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies") and the fact that Korzybski seemed to have changed his mind when he said (regarding the phrase he coined "the map is not the territory") that it was justified because "the denial of identification (as in "is not") has opposite neuro-linguistic effects on the brain from the assertion of identity (as in "is")." Chomsky said: ''"Sometimes what we say can be misleading, sometimes not, depending on whether we are careful. If there's anything else Korzybski's work , I don't see it. That was the conclusion of my undergrad papers 60 years ago. Reading Korzybski extensively, I couldn't find anything that was not either trivial or false. As for Neurolinguistic effects on the Brain , nothing was known when he wrote and very little of that is relevant now."'' Korzybski's views on what he called "'s dictum "What is is. What is not is not" Chomsky, who discredited much of the Behaviorist Doctrine that prevailed in the first half of the 20th Century proved that the principles underlying linguisitic Behavior are Abstract and Innate , and rejected the Behavioral approach to the study of Language , which, he says, just like the so-called " Neuro-linguistic Programming " that came out of Korzybski's Theories among others, has nothing to do with Neurolinguistics , but instead is a "''grotesque caricature and distortion of Science , trivial empty as an intellectual pursuit; [something that wouldn't be taken seriously by anyone if it weren't for the fact that it.... offers a theory of human malleability... fills a certain role for those who are accepting the System , provid[ing a kind of aura of acceptability for techniques of Control and Coercion .''" Chomsky, an Anarchist maintains that the greatest distorters of our Perception are concentrations of Power ,(e.g. State s, Corporation s) because they have the means to propagate their point of view and influence our perception of Reality , much more than simply not using the Verb "to be". IMPACT Korzybski's work influenced Gestalt Therapy , Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy , and Neuro-linguistic Programming (especially the Metamodel ). 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 Albert Ellis , Gregory Bateson , Buckminster Fuller , 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). SEE ALSO
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