Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950)

Photo used with permission of Institute of General Semantics

Alfred Korzybski (pronounced kore-ZHIB-ski) was born in 1879 to a land-owning family in Poland. He was raised by servants from four different countries who spoke four different languages, growing up with a working knowledge of Polish, Russian, German, and French. In this type of multilingual environment, it came naturally to Korzybski to disassociate the word, or symbol, from the thing that the word or symbol represented.

As a student he studied engineering, mathematics, and chemistry. When the first World War erupted in 1914, he was enlisted into the Russian cavalry. Not only was he severely wounded, but he witnessed first hand the devastating effects of all the new weapons of war that debuted during this “war to end all wars” ... airplanes, armored tanks, rapid-fire machine guns, poison gas.

He was sent to North America toward the end of the war when he could no longer serve on the battlefield. He supported artillery testing in Canada before transferring to the U.S. where he traveled the country speaking to groups and selling war bonds. After the war, he remained in the U.S. and married Mira Edgerly, a miniature portrait artist from Chicago.

He was haunted by his war experiences. As an engineer, he pondered this question: How is it that humans have progressed so far and so rapidly in engineering, mathematics, and the sciences, yet we still fight wars and kill each other? Or in his own words:

At present I am chiefly concerned to drive home the fact that it is the great disparity between the rapid progress of the natural and technological sciences on the one hand and the slow progress of the metaphysical, so-called social "sciences" on the other hand, that sooner or later so disturbs the equilibrium of human affairs as to result periodically in those social cataclysms which we call insurrections, revolutions, and wars (Korzybski, 1993, p. 22).

He devoted the rest of his life to this 'fact,' its implications, and consequences. In 1921 he published his first book, Manhood of Humanity: The Art and Science of Human Engineering. Then in 1933, he wrote the source book for the field of study we know as General Semantics—Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.

Because our language-behaviors are so integral to human cooperation, as well as human conflict, much (not all) of Korzybski's General Semantics directly addresses the role of language and language habits in human behavior.

Language Matters

To underscore how deeply language is ingrained as a human behavior, consider:

With language we can:

And with language we can also:

speak, write, read, and listen;
think and express our feelings;
analyze and solve problems;
establish rules, regulations, laws, policies, procedures, ordinances, and standards;
reach compromises, agreements, settlements, resolutions and contracts;
understand, to be understood, and to pass on our understandings to others;
dream, imagine, contemplate, cogitate, deliberate, create, innovate and ponder.

mislead, misinform, and misunderstand;
deny, suppress, inhibit, prohibit and limit what others do and say;
rule, dictate, terrorize, intimidate, indoctrinate and alienate;
generalize, categorize, stereotype, pigeonhole and profile;
lie, cheat, steal, quibble, libel, slander, sue and defraud;
perpetuate myths, superstitions, prejudices, feuds, and atavistic traditions;
create and exacerbate fear, anxiety, regret, guilt, jealousy, paranoia, suspicion, and hate.

(Stockdale, 2009, p. 24)

Language plays a tremendous role in human affairs. It serves as a means of cooperation and as a weapon of conflict. With it, men can solve problems, erect the towering structures of science and poetry — and talk themselves into insanity and social confusion (Lee, 1958, p.60).

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