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General Semantics
General Semantics
General Semantics (or GS) can be referred to as a general system of evaluation and awareness. It provides a systematic methodology to understand how you relate to the world around you, how you react to this world, how you react to your reactions, and how you may adjust your behavior accordingly.
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For an overview of General Semantics in French, click here.
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For an overview of General Semantics in Spanish, click here.
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Basic Understandings
Time-binding
- Only humans have demonstrated the capability to build on the knowledge of prior generations.
Alfred Korzybski referred to this capability as time-binding.
- Language serves as the principle tool that facilitates time-binding.
- Time-binding forms the basis for an ethical standard by which to evaluate human behavior; does the behavior advance time-binding and human progress based on what is known at the time, or does it deny time-binding?
- Acknowledging our time-binding inheritance dispels us of the "self-made" notion; as we understand how much we owe to others, we begin to understand our own limitations.
Scientific Approach
- Humankind's ability to time-bind is most evident when we apply a scientific approach, method or attitude in our evaluations and judgments.
- A scientific approach involves the process of continually testing your assumptions and beliefs, gathering as many facts and as much data as possible, revising your assumptions and beliefs as appropriate, and holding your conclusions and judgments tentatively.
- Hidden, or unstated assumptions and "unknown unknown's" guide our behavior to some degree; therefore we do well to acknowledge their influence and attempt to increase our awareness of them.
- We live in a process-oriented universe in which everything changes all the time. The changes may be readily apparent to us, or microscopic, or even sub-microscopic (inferred).
- Many times we are not concerned with the lack of apparent change. However, we invite trouble when we sometimes fail to account for change in people or things and act as if no change occurred.
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Important Terms
General Semantics draws together and integrates knowledge from across the spectrum of academic disciplines. But it has also developed its own lexicon of terms that have particular and specific usages within GS. Some of the most important terms, as formulated by Alfred Korzybski and others, include:
absolutistic terms:
Our language ought to reflect what we understand about the world and our experiences in that world, just as a map should be expected to accurately reflect the actual territory it depicts. If we acknowledge the limitations of our abstracting processes, that everything around us is in continual (if imperceptible) change, and that we can never know everything about anything, those limitations ought to be reflected in the language we use. Therefore we find relatively few instances to appropriately use absolutistic terms such as all, never, always, every, exact same, absolutely, exactly, certainly, etc.
abstracting:
Our awareness of an event or happening is not the same as the actual event or happening. Each nervous system abstracts a limited number of characteristics about an event, from which that individual constructs what she senses and experiences. When she describes or talks about that experience, she continues to abstract by selecting certain aspects and ignoring others. Abstracting refers to this ongoing human process of selecting, rejecting, and constructing our own individual experiences from everything that goes on around us. In other words, what we sense is not the same as what happens, what we can describe is not the same as what we sense, and the significance we give to what happens is more than what we can merely describe.
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A Tribute to Allen Walker Read (1906-2002)
"The foremost living authority on American English," Allen Walker Read authored many essays on general semantics in his lengthy life. In this tribute, we collect a majority of his known writings published in ETC: A Review of General Semantics and the General Semantics Bulletin, including some other gems.
Notable Individuals
A notable, if somewhat eclectic, group of individuals has crossed paths with general semantics over the years. Here are some names you might recognize. Also, don't overlook the impressive list of speakers for the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture (AKML) series, sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics since 1952.
A few of the more notable individuals who have been involved in general semantics include (in alphabetical order):
Steve Allen
Author, entertainer and composer attended a seminar-workshop at the Institute of General Semantics in 1961. In his book Dumbth: And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter, he included a chapter encouraging readers to become familiar with general semantics. He also delivered the 1992 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture.
Stuart Chase
Noted economist and writer, wrote the first 'popularization' of general semantics, The Tyranny of Words. In a national magazine article noting the most influential developments of the first half of the 20th century, Chase included Science and Sanity as one of the top three books.
Dr. Albert Ellis
Noted psychologist, originator of Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), cited Korzybski's work in books he authored such as A Guide to Rational Living, Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy and How to Live With A "Neurotic". Dr. Ellis also wrote the Foreword to Drive Yourself Sane, by Susan and Bruce Kodish. Dr. Ellis died in July 2007 and was remembered in the October 2007 issue of the Institute's journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics.
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