We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
- Alfred Korzybski

3 Questions: "What?"........."So what?"........."Now what?"
- Coro wisdom

"The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them."
- Albert Einstein

"The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything."
- George Santayana

"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a 10-foot chain."
- Adlai Stevenson

"Teaching and learning that lead to no significant change in behavior are practically worthless."
– Irving Lee

"Learning to un-learn to learn, for me, best describes the process of learning the discipline theoretically (verbally) and organismically."
– M. Kendig

"Learning is the gradual replacement of fantasy with fact."
- Gifford Pinchot

"The trouble with people is not so much with their ignorance as it is with their knowing so many things that are not so."
- William Alanson White

"You can't no more teach what you ain't learned than you can come from where you ain't been."
- Mark Twain

"A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it."
- Alfred Korzybski

"You can't step into the same river twice."
- Heraclitus

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."
- Leonardo da Vinci

"Happiness is not something that happens….It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them."
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"We are always getting to live, but never living."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences."
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"God may forgive your sins. But your nervous system won't."
- Alfred Korzybski

"The self explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes an explorer of everything else."
- Elias Canetti

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
- Albert Einstein

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
- Mark Twain

"Time is but the stream I go fishing in."
- Henry David Thoreau

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and only lukewarm defenders among those who may do well under the new."
- Machiavelli

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw

"To progress, man must re-make himself, and he cannot re-make himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor."
- Alexis Carrel

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
- Elvis Costello

Institute of General Semantics

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ETC: A Review of General Semantics


History & Objectives

ETC: A Review of General Semantics is a journal founded in 1943 by the International Society for General Semantics. That organization merged with the Institute of General Semantics in 2003 and the Institute has published the journal since that time.

ETC is devoted to publishing material which contributes to and advances the understanding of language, thought and behavior: time-binding (and its failures), map-territory confusion, word-meaning problems, dating, indexing, two-valued thinking, categorical thinking, non-allness, signal reactions, problems with the abstraction process, self-reflectiveness, and other facets of general semantics.

Submitting to ETC

ETC welcomes submissions about the symbolic environments that humans spend their time in. We are interested in approaches to the nature of language, how we make what we call meaning, and how we can be better meaning-makers through an understanding of the relationships among symbols, mind, meaning, language, thought, and culture.

Submissions fall into four main areas, keeping in mind, of course, that these categories are tentative, artificial, and subject to revision. The categories are meant to express the broad range of possible contributions, not limit them. Contributors are not required to specify which area a particular piece falls into.

    1. Articles about the symbolic environment, emerging or persisting metaphors, current or historical study of symbol use which advance the academic understanding of symbols and human behavior and culture.

    2. Cases and observations of language use and misuse in politics, commerce, relationships, and self-talk which contribute to our personal understanding of the relationship of symbols and behavior.

    3. Instructional schemata for educators to illustrate general semantics principles: lessons plans, activities, demonstrations, etc.

    4. Poems, diagrams, short fiction, artwork, or other vehicles for thought which express or explain some idea about symbols and behavior, such as maps and territories, abstractions, non-categorical thinking, extensional thinking, or the principle of etcetera.

Article submissions are accepted electronically at editor-etc (at) generalsemantics.org. The Writers Guidelines are available here.

    Editor: Bill Petkanas (editor-etc (at) generalsemantics.org)
    Poetry Ring Editor: Lance Strate (strate (at) fordham.edu)
    Book Review Editor: Martin H. Levinson (MandkLevin (at) aol.com)

Sample Issues & Contributor Information

  • Download Call for Papers (PDF)

  • Click here to view issues of ETC from 2004-2008

  • Click here for the ETC Writers Guidelines

  • Click here for the standard IGS Publishing Agreement

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