Alfred Korzybski is known as the founder of a new scientific direction - general semantics. His thesis that "the map is not a territory" formed the basis of a number of approaches to psychotherapy, it is widely used in trainings of 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 on July 3, 1879 in a family of Polish aristocrats. He graduated from 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. He was given the task of coordinating the supply of weapons to the front. In America, Korzybski has lectured on the war on several occasions.
At the end of the imperialist war, Alfred decided to stay in the United States. In 1940 he became an American citizen.
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 create an entirely new discipline called general semantics. The scientist outlined the theoretical foundations of the new direction in the book "Science and Sanity" (1933).
In 1938, Alfred founded the Institute of General Semantics and directed it until the last days of his life.
The essence of his theory is that the possibilities of cognition are limited by the peculiarities 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 abstraction. By this term, the author understands 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 discrepancy between the description of the world and reality itself should be approached consciously.
In the system of knowledge developed by Korzybski, there is no place for defining the "essence" of phenomena; it indicates that "the map is not a territory." The author of the general semantics proposed to limit the scope of the use of the verb "to be", which is the basis of structural restrictions in describing the world.
Influence of Korzybski's ideas
Alfred Korzybski's research influenced the development of gestalt psychology, rational emotive therapy, and neurolinguistic programming (NLP). The system of general semantics developed by the scientist formed the basis of the methodology for treating military neuroses. Dr. Douglas Kelly, who was a psychiatrist at a prison for Nazi criminals, was involved in the development of the therapeutic approach.
The theoretical positions put forward by Alfred Korzybski subsequently influenced the work of Gregory Bateson, Frank Herbert, Alvin Toffler, Ron Hubbard, Robert Anton Wilson, Jacques Fresco.
The scientist passed away in March 1950 in the United States. The doctors named the cause of death as coronary thrombosis.
