Alfred Korzybski

What , a Polish count and mathematician, accomplished is similar to what Aristotle did around 500 BC, and what Francis Bacon did in the 17th century. They summarized and compiled the methods of evaluating up to their times. Korzybski did the same for the 20th century in the 1930's. He wrote only two books. The first, The Manhood of Humanity (1921) proposed seeing humans as time-binders, while animals were space binders and plants were chemical binders. But it was his next book in 1933 that was most influential, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. S&S was listed as one of the most influential books of the 20th century by a survey of most of the prominent scientists around 1950. Gaston Bachelard, the great French scientist, philosopher and poet wrote in The Philosophy of No: 'The psychological and even physiological conditions of a non-Aristotelian logic have been resolutely faced in the great work of Count Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity. This volume of almost 800 pages is the prelude to an encyclopaedia whose plan aims at the reform, in a non-Aristotelian direction, of a great many sciences. It proposes this reform as a plan of sanity, as an education of energy and as the integration of active thought into life-progress.

Korzybski was known by Bachelard, and knew J.S.Bois personally. Bois became one of his most innovative "students." Physicist David Bohm studied Korzybski's work, as did hundreds of other scientists, and L.L. Whyte did a keynote memorial address for the Institute of General Semantics in honor of Korzybski. They all embraced holism in one form or another. Science and Sanity was named one of the most 100 influential books of the 20th century by a community of scientists.

Some of the key notions that Korzybski introduction into the epistemological methodology are:

*Abstracting and consciousness of abstracting
*Multi-ordinality
*Organism-as-a-whole-within-an-environment
*Epistemic correlation between the 'silent' and verbal levels of experience

Much of Science and Sanity has been incorporated into our culture without any direct reference to it. Most people remember Korzybski's phrase 'The map is not the territory; the map doesn't cover all of the territory; and the map is self-reflexive (it becomes part of the territory)'. David Bohm acknowledged Korzybski's importance in his views.

The Institute of General Semantics founded by Alfred Korzybski in 1938 has a web site devoted to the philosopher and to general semantics. It advances the work begun by Korzybski, which he termed 'general semantics', a non-Aristotelian system. It conducts seminars, sponsors programs, publishes books and periodicals, and serves 'as a clearinghouse for those seeking information and training in the discipline'. Its web site expresses the hope that there will be 'greater world-wide access to Korzybski's work - - -, thereby accelerating the time-binding process.' The institute can also be reached at institute@general-semantics.org

The books:

Science and Sanity
Manhood of Humanity