Alfred Korzybski is known as the founder of a new scientific field - general semantics. His position that “the map is not a territory” formed the basis of a number of approaches to psychotherapy, it is widely used in training in behavior and personality development. Korzybski's work has influenced many researchers of human consciousness and society.
From the biography of Alfred Korzybski
Korzybski was born July 3, 1879 in a family of Polish aristocrats. Received higher education at the University of Warsaw. He took part in the First World War: he served as an intelligence officer in the Russian army. Was injured.
In 1916, Korzybski moved to Canada, from there - to the United States. The task was set before him: to coordinate the supply of weapons to the front. In America, Korzybski repeatedly gave lectures on the war.
At the end of the imperialist war, Alfred decided to stay in the United States. In 1940, he accepted American citizenship.
In 1921, Korzybski published a book in which he described in detail his own theory of humanity, capable of self-development, based on accumulated knowledge.
General semantics of Alfred Korzybski
Scientific work led Korzybski to the creation of a completely new discipline, called general semantics. The scientist outlined the theoretical foundations of a new direction in the book Science and Sanity (1933).
In 1938, Alfred founded the Institute of General Semantics and led it until the last days of his life.
The essence of his theory is that the possibilities of cognition are limited by the characteristics of the nervous organization of a person and the structure of language. People are not able to directly perceive the phenomena of reality. They interact with the world through abstractions. By this term, the author understands the non-verbal information that the nervous system receives from the outside, as well as indicators of the verbal type reflected in the language.
Very often, human perception and language deceive a person who takes the distorted data of his experience for “facts”. Korzybski emphasizes that the question of the inconsistency of the description of the world and reality itself should be approached consciously.
In the Korzybski system of knowledge developed there is no place for the definition of the “essence” of phenomena; he indicates that “the map is not a territory”. The author of general semantics suggested limiting the scope of use of the verb "to be, " which is the basis of structural restrictions in the description of the world.
