General Semantics
Encyclopedia
General semantics is a program begun in the 1920's that seeks to regulate the evaluative operations performed in the human brain. After partial program launches under the trial names "human engineering" and "humanology," Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski
(1879–1950) fully launched the program as "general semantics" when he self-published in 1933 his 800-page Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.
General semantics is not generalized semantics
. Misunderstandings traceable to the program's name have greatly complicated the program's history and development.
The sourcebook for general semantics, Science and Sanity presents general semantics as both a theoretical and a practical system whose adoption can reliably alter human behavior in the direction of greater sanity. Its author asserted that general semantics training could eventually unify people and nations. 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."
Most recognized specialists in the knowledge areas where Korzybski claimed to have anchored general semantics—biology, epistemology, mathematics, neurology, physics, psychiatry, etc.—have ignored general semantics or discarded it as trivial or confused. Starting around 1940, university English professor S.I. Hayakawa (1906–1992) assembled elements of general semantics into a package suitable for incorporation into mainstream communications curricula. The Institute of General Semantics
, which Korzybski and co-workers founded in 1938, continues today.
In the 1946 "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram, 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." 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."
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
, 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
, 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
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."
in the memory-prediction model
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, Wendell Johnson
and Neil Postman
, played major roles in framing general semantics, especially for non-readers of Science and Sanity.
summed up general semantics as "some hypothetical neurology fortified with dogmatic metaphysics." In 1952, two years after Korzybski died, American skeptic Martin Gardner
wrote, "[Korzybski's] work moves into the realm of cultism and pseudo-science."
A few general semanticists continue into the 21st century to characterize general semantics as science. However, applying metrics developed by Loet Leydesdorff
, Ralph Kenyon observed that in the first 70 years following publication of Science and Sanity, human knowledge expanded 44 million times. "Vast areas of material presented in Science and Sanity have been superseded by more recently gained knowledge," Kenyon wrote in 2003. "Korzybski was aware that this would happen, and he predicted it." With few infusions of fresh science after Science and Sanity, and with its main support issuing from discursive books and essays, not quantified findings from peer-reviewed experiments and research, general semantics almost from its beginnings has trended away from empiricism. Its academic friends today reside almost exclusively in English or communications or media ecology
faculties.
Yet another characterization for general semantics, indifferent to all university standards and limitations, considers general semantics a "discipline." Recent Institute of General Semantics
executive director Steve Stockdale has compared it to yoga
.
Interpretation as semantics
General semantics accumulated only a few early experimental validations. In 1938, economist and writer Stuart Chase
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 Institute of General Semantics
in Chicago. In the introduction to his own Language in Action, a 1941 Book of the Month Club
selection, Hayakawa wrote, "[Korzybski's] principles 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."
, patented by Korzybski in the 1920's, remained the main training aid to help students reach "the silent level," a prerequisite for achieving the imperfectly understood "neurological delay." Preempted by Hayakawa, stagnating in its workshop drills, increasingly out of favor with academicians, general semantics as defined by Korzybski and practiced at the Institute entered a long period of hard times. 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:
diverged from the founders' path and did not take themselves quite so seriously. Stuart Mayper (1916–1997), who studied under Karl Popper
and introduced Popper's principle of falsifiability
into the workshops he led at the Institute starting in 1977, said of Korzybski with some detachment, "[H]e was a prophet, an enthusiast, a man with a mission. To convince others, he exaggerated—frequently." More modest pronouncements have 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 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).
and the Vienna Circle
, and of early operationalists and pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, 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 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 speakers of English. On the other hand, later Zen-popularizer Alan Watts
was influenced by ideas from general semantics.
Although he appeared to have misunderstood or altered some of the basics of general semantics, L. Ron Hubbard
is widely believed to have used the theory in his creation of Dianetics
and later to have incorporated it into Scientology
; the first of these two movements 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 (1913-2007), who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy
, acknowledged influence from general semantics and delivered the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
in 1991. The Bruges
(Belgium) center for Solution Focused Therapy
operates under the name Korzybski Instituut Training and Research Center.
During 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 R. Delany
, Suzette Haden Elgin
and Robert Anton Wilson
. In 2008, John Wright extended van Vogt's Null-A series with Null-A Continuum.
Neil Postman
, 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
, a co-founder of the Media Ecology Association, served as executive director of the Institute of General Semantics from 2007 to 2010.
Related subjects
Related persons
Alfred Korzybski
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is remembered for developing the theory of general semantics...
(1879–1950) fully launched the program as "general semantics" when he self-published in 1933 his 800-page Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.
General semantics is not generalized semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
. Misunderstandings traceable to the program's name have greatly complicated the program's history and development.
The sourcebook for general semantics, Science and Sanity presents general semantics as both a theoretical and a practical system whose adoption can reliably alter human behavior in the direction of greater sanity. Its author asserted that general semantics training could eventually unify people and nations. 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."
Most recognized specialists in the knowledge areas where Korzybski claimed to have anchored general semantics—biology, epistemology, mathematics, neurology, physics, psychiatry, etc.—have ignored general semantics or discarded it as trivial or confused. Starting around 1940, university English professor S.I. Hayakawa (1906–1992) assembled elements of general semantics into a package suitable for incorporation into mainstream communications curricula. The Institute of General Semantics
Institute of General Semantics
The Institute of General Semantics 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 seminal text Science & Sanity, and books by other authors...
, which Korzybski and co-workers founded in 1938, continues today.
"Identification" and "the silent level"
Imagine that you are holding a freshly cut juicy lemon. Tilt back your head, open your mouth, raise the lemon above your tongue and start to squeeze. Did you salivate while reading these last sentences?In the 1946 "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram, 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." 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."
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
Max Black was a British-American philosopher, who was a leading influential figure in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies...
, 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
Autoassociative memory, also known as auto-association memory or an autoassociation network, is often misunderstood to be only a form of backpropagation or other neural networks...
, 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
Memory-prediction framework
The memory-prediction framework is a theory of brain function that was created by Jeff Hawkins and described in his 2004 book On Intelligence...
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."
Extensional devices
Identification prevents what general semantics seeks to promote: the additional cortical processing experienced as a delay. To combat identification, general semantics trains students in the use of "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 studentsthis term from studentsprior 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 Annathis term, this course is different from Annathat 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 memoryAutoassociative memory
Autoassociative memory, also known as auto-association memory or an autoassociation network, is often misunderstood to be only a form of backpropagation or other neural networks...
in the memory-prediction model
Memory-prediction framework
The memory-prediction framework is a theory of brain function that was created by Jeff Hawkins and described in his 2004 book On Intelligence...
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, Wendell Johnson
Wendell Johnson
Dr. Wendell Johnson was an American psychologist, speech pathologist and author and was a proponent of General Semantics . He was born in Roxbury, Kansas and died in Iowa City, Iowa. The Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Center, part of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is named after...
and Neil Postman
Neil Postman
Neil Postman was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University...
, played major roles in framing general semantics, especially for non-readers of Science and Sanity.
Science, pseudoscience, or what?
Packing the newest science of his era into Science and Sanity and demonstrating in the book how mathematics translates to everyday life and language, Korzybski wrote in the preface to the third edition (1947) that general semantics "turned out to be an empirical natural science." Contesting that characterization, BlackMax Black
Max Black was a British-American philosopher, who was a leading influential figure in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies...
summed up general semantics as "some hypothetical neurology fortified with dogmatic metaphysics." In 1952, two years after Korzybski died, American skeptic Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
wrote, "[Korzybski's] work moves into the realm of cultism and pseudo-science."
A few general semanticists continue into the 21st century to characterize general semantics as science. However, applying metrics developed by Loet Leydesdorff
Loet Leydesdorff
Loet Leydesdorff is a Dutch sociologist, cyberneticist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. He is known for his work in the sociology of communication and innovation.- Biography :...
, Ralph Kenyon observed that in the first 70 years following publication of Science and Sanity, human knowledge expanded 44 million times. "Vast areas of material presented in Science and Sanity have been superseded by more recently gained knowledge," Kenyon wrote in 2003. "Korzybski was aware that this would happen, and he predicted it." With few infusions of fresh science after Science and Sanity, and with its main support issuing from discursive books and essays, not quantified findings from peer-reviewed experiments and research, general semantics almost from its beginnings has trended away from empiricism. Its academic friends today reside almost exclusively in English or communications or media ecology
Media ecology
Media ecology is a contested term within media studies having different meanings within European and North American contexts. The North American definition refers to aninterdisciplinary field of media theory and media design involving the study of "symbolic environment, or the socially constructed,...
faculties.
Yet another characterization for general semantics, indifferent to all university standards and limitations, considers general semantics a "discipline." Recent Institute of General Semantics
Institute of General Semantics
The Institute of General Semantics 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 seminal text Science & Sanity, and books by other authors...
executive director Steve Stockdale has compared it to yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
.
Early attempts at validation
The First American Congress for General Semantics convened in March 1935 at the Central Washington College of Education in Ellensburg, WA. 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 semanticsSemanticsSemantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
General semantics accumulated only a few early experimental validations. In 1938, economist and writer Stuart ChaseStuart Chase
Stuart Chase was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His hybrid background of engineering and economics places him in the same philosophical camp as R. Buckminster Fuller...
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 Institute of General Semantics
Institute of General Semantics
The Institute of General Semantics 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 seminal text Science & Sanity, and books by other authors...
in Chicago. In the introduction to his own Language in Action, a 1941 Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
selection, Hayakawa wrote, "[Korzybski's] principles 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."
Hard times
Except for the introduction of a new "neuro-relaxation" component, led by dancer and Institute editorial secretary Charlotte Schuchardt, the regimen in the Institute's general semantics workshops continued to follow the prescriptions laid down in Chapter 29 of Science and Sanity. The structural differentialStructural 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 looks like a pegboard with tags. Created by Alfred Korzybski, and awarded a U.S. patent on May 26, 1925, it is used as a training device in...
, patented by Korzybski in the 1920's, remained the main training aid to help students reach "the silent level," a prerequisite for achieving the imperfectly understood "neurological delay." Preempted by Hayakawa, stagnating in its workshop drills, increasingly out of favor with academicians, general semantics as defined by Korzybski and practiced at the Institute entered a long period of hard times. Marjorie Kendig
Marjorie Kendig
Marjorie Kendig Gates , best known as M . Kendig, was an American administrator, director of the Institute of General Semantics from 1950 until 1965, and co-worker of Alfred Korzybski who completed his collected writings after Korzybski's death in 1950.Marjorie Kendig was one of the founders of the...
(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.
Lowered sights
While respecting both Korzybski and Kendig for their achievements and dedication, successors at the Institute of General SemanticsInstitute of General Semantics
The Institute of General Semantics 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 seminal text Science & Sanity, and books by other authors...
diverged from the founders' path and did not take themselves quite so seriously. Stuart Mayper (1916–1997), who studied under Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
and introduced Popper's principle of falsifiability
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
into the workshops he led at the Institute starting in 1977, said of Korzybski with some detachment, "[H]e was a prophet, an enthusiast, a man with a mission. To convince others, he exaggerated—frequently." More modest pronouncements have replaced Korzybski's claims that general semantics can change human nature and introduce an era of universal human agreement. In 2000, Robert Pula
Robert P. Pula
Robert P. Pula, was a Director Emeritus of the Institute of General Semantics, author of A General-Semantics Glossary, and a composer. Pula served as the lead lecturer for the Institute of General Semantics for many years. He also edited the General Semantics Bulletin from 1977-1985, and served...
(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 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).
Important premises in general semantics theory
- Non-Aristotelianism: While AristotleAristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
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 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', but 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 uniquely 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: 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. For example, 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, antAntAnts are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...
s), 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, and plants, which are usually stationary, as energy-binders.
- 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
General semantics has important links with analytic philosophy and the philosophy of science; it could be characterized without too much distortion as applied analytic philosophy. The influence of Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
and the Vienna Circle
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
, and of early operationalists and pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, 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 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 speakers of English. On the other hand, later Zen-popularizer Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York...
was influenced by ideas from general semantics.
Although he appeared to have misunderstood or altered some of the basics of general semantics, L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...
is widely believed to have used the theory in his creation of Dianetics
Dianetics
Dianetics is a set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body that was invented by the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and is practiced by followers of Scientology...
and later to have incorporated it into Scientology
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
; the first of these two movements in turn introduced General Semantics to a wider audience in the early 1950s, including popular science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt
A. E. van Vogt
Alfred Elton van Vogt was a Canadian-born science fiction author regarded by some as one of the most popular and complex science fiction writers of the mid-twentieth century: the "Golden Age" of the genre....
, personal growth theorist Harvey Jackins
Harvey Jackins
Carl Harvey Jackins was the founder, leader and principal theorist of Re-evaluation Counseling .-Early life:Jackins was born in Northern Idaho on June 28, 1916....
and his movement Re-evaluation Counseling
Re-evaluation Counseling
Re-evaluation Counseling or RC is an organization founded by Harvey Jackins in the 1950s and led by him until his death in 1999. It introduced a procedure called "co-counseling", which Jackins said was a new and effective method of helping people and bringing about social reform. RC teaches...
and movements like Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is an existential/experiential form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility, and that focuses upon the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating...
. The founders of these movements did not themselves credit Korzybski for their ideas.
Albert Ellis (1913-2007), who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy
Rational emotive behavior therapy
Rational emotive behavior therapy , previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is a comprehensive, active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy which focuses on resolving emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and enabling people to lead...
, acknowledged influence from general semantics and delivered the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
The distinguished Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture series was begun in 1952. It is an annual event sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics in honor of Alfred Korzybski. Each year the Institute invites some prominent scholar or otherwise notable individual to give the lecture. Lecturers...
in 1991. The Bruges
Bruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....
(Belgium) center for Solution Focused Therapy
Solution focused brief therapy
Solution focused brief therapy , often referred to as simply 'solution focused therapy' or 'brief therapy', is a type of talking therapy that is based upon social constructionist philosophy. It focuses on what clients want to achieve through therapy rather than on the problem that made them seek help...
operates under the name Korzybski Instituut Training and Research Center.
During the 1940s and 1950s, general semantics entered the idiom of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, most notably through the works of A. E. van Vogt
A. E. van Vogt
Alfred Elton van Vogt was a Canadian-born science fiction author regarded by some as one of the most popular and complex science fiction writers of the mid-twentieth century: the "Golden Age" of the genre....
, The World of Null-A
The World of Null-A
The World of Null-A, sometimes written The World of Ā, is a 1948 science fiction novel by A. E. van Vogt. It was originally published as a three-part serial in Astounding Stories...
and its sequels, and Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
, Gulf
Gulf (Heinlein)
Gulf is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein, originally published as a serial in the November and December 1949 issues of Astounding Science Fiction. It concerns a secret society of geniuses who act to protect humanity...
. 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 Knight
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...
and others; they have since shown a tendency to reappear (often without attribution) in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel R. Delany
Samuel R. Delany
Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...
, Suzette Haden Elgin
Suzette Haden Elgin
Suzette Haden Elgin is an American science fiction author. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and is considered an important figure in the field of science fiction constructed languages...
and Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
. In 2008, John Wright extended van Vogt's Null-A series with Null-A Continuum.
Neil Postman
Neil Postman
Neil Postman was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University...
, founder of New York University's media ecology
Media ecology
Media ecology is a contested term within media studies having different meanings within European and North American contexts. The North American definition refers to aninterdisciplinary field of media theory and media design involving the study of "symbolic environment, or the socially constructed,...
program in 1971, edited ETC.: A Review of General Semantics from 1976 to 1986. Postman's student Lance Strate
Lance Strate
Lance A. Strate is an American Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and an expert in the field of Communication and Cyberspace and Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment.-Education:...
, a co-founder of the Media Ecology Association, served as executive director of the Institute of General Semantics from 2007 to 2010.
See also
Related fields- Cognitive scienceCognitive scienceCognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
- Cognitive therapyCognitive therapyCognitive behavioral therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach: a talking therapy. CBT aims to solve problems concerning dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure in the present...
- E-PrimeE-PrimeE-Prime is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime does not allow conjugations of to be , archaic forms E-Prime (short for English-Prime, sometimes denoted E′) is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime does...
- Gestalt TherapyGestalt therapyGestalt therapy is an existential/experiential form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility, and that focuses upon the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating...
- Language and thoughtLanguage and thoughtA variety of different authors, theories and fields purport influences between language and thought.Many point out the seemingly common-sense realization that upon introspection we seem to think in the language we speak...
- Rational Emotive Behavior TherapyRational emotive behavior therapyRational emotive behavior therapy , previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is a comprehensive, active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy which focuses on resolving emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and enabling people to lead...
- Linguistic relativityLinguistic relativityThe principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...
Related subjects
- Alfred Korzybski Memorial LectureAlfred Korzybski Memorial LectureThe distinguished Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture series was begun in 1952. It is an annual event sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics in honor of Alfred Korzybski. Each year the Institute invites some prominent scholar or otherwise notable individual to give the lecture. Lecturers...
- List of NLP topics
- Maybe Logic
- PropagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
- Harold Innis's communications theoriesHarold Innis's communications theoriesHarold Adams Innis was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on Canadian economic history and on media and communication theory...
- Non-Aristotelian logic - Use in science fiction
Related persons
- Gregory BatesonGregory BatesonGregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...
- Allen Walker ReadAllen Walker ReadAllen Walker Read was an American etymologist and lexicographer, best known for his studies into the words "okay" and "fuck."...
- William VogtWilliam VogtWilliam Vogt was an ecologist and ornithologist, with a strong interest in population control. He was the author of best-seller Road to Survival , National Director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and secretary of the Conservation Foundation.William Vogt was born in Mineola, New York...
- Elwood MurrayElwood MurrayElwood Murray was an American administrator and scientist in the field of speech communications and general semantics.- Biography :...
- Sanford I. BermanSanford I. BermanDr. Sanford I. Berman is a philanthropist, real estate investor, professional hypnotist, and board member of the Institute of General Semantics. As of the year 2000, Berman had given more than a million dollars to the University of California, San Diego ; San Diego State University ; and...
Other sources not cited in the article
- The art of awareness; a textbook on general semantics by J. Samuel Bois, Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown Co., 1966.
- Crazy talk, stupid talk: how we defeat ourselves by the way we talk and what to do about it by Neil PostmanNeil PostmanNeil Postman was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University...
, 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 UniversityHofstra UniversityHofstra University is a private, nonsectarian institution of higher learning located in the Village of Hempstead, New York, United States, about east of New York City: less than an hour away by train or car...
. 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.
- 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.
- 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 PaulosJohn Allen PaulosJohn Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia who has gained fame as a writer and speaker on mathematics and the importance of mathematical literacy...
'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 RapoportAnatol RapoportAnatol Rapoport was a Russian-born American Jewish mathematical psychologist. He contributed to general systems theory, mathematical biology and to the mathematical modeling of social interaction and stochastic models of contagion.-Biography:...
, New York: Wiley (1953,1965). - Semantics by Anatol Rapoport, Crowell, 1975. 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.
- "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.
- Assignment in EternityAssignment in EternityAssignment in Eternity, is a collection of four mixed science fiction and fantasy novellas by Robert A. Heinlein, first published in hardcover by Fantasy Press in 1953, with some of the stories somewhat revised from their original magazine publications, as follows:* Gulf .* Lost Legacy...
, (1942), specifically the story "Gulf," is a representative example of the influence of General Semantics in the work of Robert A. HeinleinRobert A. HeinleinRobert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
. The homo novi or "supermen" of the story express recognizably Korzybskian ideas about the relationship between language and thought. - Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies in General Semantics, by Harry L. Weinberg, Harper and Row, 1959.
- People in Quandaries: the semantics of personal adjustment by Wendell JohnsonWendell JohnsonDr. Wendell Johnson was an American psychologist, speech pathologist and author and was a proponent of General Semantics . He was born in Roxbury, Kansas and died in Iowa City, Iowa. The Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Center, part of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is named after...
, 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. - 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.
- Living With Change, Wendell Johnson, Harper Collins, 1972.
- General Semantics in Psychotherapy: Selected Writings on Methods Aiding Therapy, edited by Isabel Caro and Charlotte Schuchardt Read, Institute of General Semantics, 2002.
Further reading
- Dare to Inquire: Sanity and Survival for the 21st Century and Beyond. by Bruce I. Kodish, (2003). Robert Anton Wilson 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 BandlerRichard BandlerRichard Wayne Bandler is an American author and trainer in the field of self-help. He is best known as the co-inventor of Neuro-linguistic programming , a collection of concepts and techniques intended to understand and change human behavior-patterns...
and John GrinderJohn GrinderJohn Grinder, Ph.D., is an American linguist, author, management consultant, trainer and speaker. Grinder is credited with the co-creation with Richard Bandler of the field of Neuro-linguistic programming. He is co-director of Quantum Leap Inc., a management consulting firm founded by his partner...
, (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 EdelmanMurray EdelmanMurray J. Edelman was an American political scientist known for his research on symbolic politics and political psychology.-Career:...
(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 LakoffGeorge LakoffGeorge P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972...
and Mark JohnsonMark Johnson (professor)Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is well-known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as...
, (1980).
- Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought by George LakoffGeorge LakoffGeorge P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972...
and Mark JohnsonMark Johnson (professor)Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is well-known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as...
, (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 academic articles
- Bramwell, R. D. (1981). The semantics of multiculturalism: a new element in curriculum. Canadian Journal of Education, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1981), pp. 92–101.
- Clarke, R. A. (1948). General semantics in art education. The School Review, Vol. 56, No. 10 (Dec., 1948), pp. 600–605.
- Chisholm, F. P. (1943). Some misconceptions about general semantics. College EnglishCollege EnglishCollege English is an official publication of the American National Council of Teachers of English and is aimed at college-level teachers and scholars of English...
, Vol. 4, No. 7 (Apr., 1943), p. 412-416. - Glicksberg, C. I. (1946) General semantics and the science of man. Scientific MonthlyScientific monthlyScientific Monthly was a science magazine published from 1915 to 1957. Psychologist James McKeen Cattell was the original founder and editor. In 1957 Scientific Monthly was absorbed by Science....
, Vol. 62, No. 5 (May, 1946), pp. 440–446. - Hallie, P. P. (1952). A criticism of general semantics. College English, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Oct., 1952), pp. 17–23.
- Hasselris, P. (1991). From Peral Harbor to Watergate to Kuwait: "Language in Thought and Action". The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Feb., 1991), pp. 28–35.
- Hayakawa, S. I. (1939). General semantics and propaganda. Public Opinion QuarterlyPublic Opinion QuarterlyPublic Opinion Quarterly is an academic journal published by Oxford University Press for the American Association for Public Opinion Research...
, Vol. 3 No. 2 (Apr., 1939), pp. 197–208. - Krohn, F. B. (1985). A general semantics approach to teaching business ethics. Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 22, Issue 3 (Summer, 1985), pp 59–66.
- Maymi, P. (1956). General concepts or laws in translation. The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1956), pp. 13–21.
- O'Brien, P. M. (1972). The sesame land of general semantics. The English Journal, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Feb., 1972), pp. 281–301.
- Rapaport, W. J. (1995). Understanding understanding: syntactic semantics and computational cognition. Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 9, AI, Connectionism and Philosophical Psychology (1995), pp. 49–88.
- Thorndike, E. L. (1946). The psychology of semantics. American Journal of PsychologyAmerican Journal of PsychologyThe American Journal of Psychology was the first English-language journal devoted primarily to experimental psychology . AJP was founded by the Johns Hopkins University psychologist Granville Stanley Hall in 1887...
, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1946), pp. 613–632. - Whitworth, R. (1991). A book for all occasions: activities for teaching general semantics. The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Feb., 1991), pp. 50–54.
- Youngren, W. H. (1968). General semantics and the science of meaning. College English, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Jan., 1968), pp. 253–285.