The Polish Count Who Tried to Change the Way Everybody Speaks

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What if the way you see things misguides your mind? How does our use of language influence our perception of the world? These and other such questions are central to General Semantics, a philosophy of language started by the Polish thinker Alfred Korzybski. The ideas of this aristocrat and man of various talents (e.g. crafting) influenced many, including 'Dune' author Frank Herbert.

Working against war

Professor Albert Einstein, Princeton University, photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

In the 1930s, Einstein and Freud shared a correspondence on the subject of how to prevent mankind from making war. In it, the physicist inquired whether it is 'possible to control man’s mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychosis of hate and destructiveness?' and the psychoanalyst answered by stating that ‘(…) whatever makes for cultural development is working also against war’. Well, for one thing, this makes writing for Culture.pl/en seem like contributing to peacekeeping; I’ll keep that in mind… Also, at the time of the correspondence similar issues like those addressed in it were occupying the mind of the noted Polish thinker Alfred Korzybski. A scientist and philosopher, he was developing a philosophy of language called General Semantics, which he believed could lead humanity to greater sanity, a state in which things like suspicion, hatred and violence would be seriously limited. Needless to say, such a state could help prevent war. The core of Korzybski’s ideas was published in his 1933 book Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.

A rotating object

Semantics is a field that analyses the meanings of words and the relations between words and their referents. A simple semantic exercise would be to analyse the meaning of the expression ‘Big Apple’, which stands for a large fruit but also the city of New York. Korzybski proposed General Semantics as kind of an expanded version of this field that also explores the processes that govern our understanding of the world, otherwise known as cognition. Namely, he pointed to the fact that before you put something into language you first encounter it with your senses (e.g. sight, hearing, thought) and that the way in which you later apply words to the encountered stimuli can be misleading, even to your own mind. For example: you see a rotating object that looks like a disc, so you describe it as one, but after the rotation stops you can see that the object is actually a fan with blades and that you used the wrong word.

This is, of course, a very straightforward example but nevertheless gives a sense of the kind of issues General Semantics addresses. It’s basically a philosophy of language that teaches you not to jump to conclusions and provides you with tools on how to do that. Among these are: the ‘neurological delay’ – before you label something with words give your brain a while to process the information so that your thinking isn’t too quick and hence automatic or schematic; distinguishing between facts and assumptions; remembering that new information can always appear. One of Korzybski’s most famous quotes is ‘the map is not the territory’, which refers to the conviction that even the best knowledge doesn’t equal reality. With this as one of its principles, General Semantics also teaches how to express yourself in a manner that helps avoid confusion and facilitates respect by taking into account various points of view.

A man of many talents

Korzybski created General Semantics as a result of extensive research done in various fields like physics, mathematical logic, linguistics and physiology. It is a truly interdisciplinary school of thought whose scope reflects the open-mindedness of its maker. Korzybski was, however, not only a man interested in many sciences, but also a man of many talents. This Polish Count, who was born in Warsaw in 1879 into a family with a tradition of scientific activity, was a polyglot knowing, apart from his native tongue, also German, French, Russian and English. In his youth, when his father was away on business, he would often supervise the farming activities at his family estate near Warsaw, thanks to which he gained experience in farming and management. A chemical engineer by education, he also worked as a school teacher. When World War I was starting, he joined the Russian army where he was assigned to the General Staff Intelligence Department (Poland was partitioned back then). Korzybski valiantly participated in this conflict sustaining severe wounds. Some believe this first-hand experience of the atrocities of war as a source of his motivation to create General Semantics, a philosophy aimed, among other things, at limiting senseless violence among mankind.

From generation to generation

Burt, Frederick, Mrs. (Mira Edgerly), portrait photograph, 1914. Creator: Arnold Genthe, photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

In 1917 he came to the U.S., where he found work as an inspector at a horseshoe factory and left the Russian army. He eventually married Mira Edgerly, an American portrait painter from Chicago, and started a career as an author and lecturer. His most important works, apart from the already mentioned Science and Sanity, include also the 1921 book Manhood of Humanity in which he points to the ability to transmit knowledge and culture from generation to generation (which he called ‘time-binding’) as central to the identity of man as opposed to other life forms like animals and plants. Korzybski’s hard work led to the opening of the Institute of General Semantics in 1938 in Chicago, which later moved to Lakeview, Connecticut. The institution educated apprentices in the Pole’s philosophy, who himself became a naturalised U.S. citizen in 1940. Ten years later, Korzybski passed away. But the institute still exists and carries on his legacy.

These letters 'seem' black

L. Ron Hubbard At Desk, photo by Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty Images

Inspired by the principles of General Semantics, one of Korzybski’s best-known students, D. David Bourland, Jr., proposed a whole new version of the English language called E-prime. This modus disallows the use of any form of the verb ‘to be’ in order to limit the amount of categorical statements in communication. For example, you couldn’t say ‘these letters are black’, using E-prime, you’d have to say ‘these letters seem black’, and so on. E-prime stresses the relativity of language which, according to Bourland, the verb ‘to be’ shrouds. Maybe it were such radical propositions that were responsible for General Semantics’ eventual decrease in prominence. Surely the well-known fact that the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard was an admirer of Korzybski’s works weakened their reputation. Also, some of Korzybski’s beliefs e.g. that the practice of General Semantics could help cure physical conditions were simply ungrounded. Regardless of the reasons, today the philosophy that enjoyed a spell of influence from the 1930s to the 1950s and was inspirational to William S. Burroughs and Dune author Frank Herbert, is quite obscure. Nevertheless there are people who advocate for a return to its teachings, arguing they could provide solutions to such problems of the digital era like disinformation and online hate.

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