Alfred Korzybski Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is most remembered for developing the theory of general.

Presentation on theme: "Alfred Korzybski Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is most remembered for developing the theory of general."— Presentation transcript:

1 Alfred Korzybski Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is most remembered for developing the theory of general semantics.He was born in Warsaw, Congress Poland. He came from an aristocratic family whose members had more..more..

2 “ Alfred Korzybski:The word is not the thing. #Words#Words

3 “ Alfred Korzybski:...provided we could define all terms. But this is impossible... We thus see that all linguistic schemes, if analyzed far enough, would depend on undefined terms. #Democracy #Democracy

4 “ Alfred Korzybski:There are two ways to slide easily through life to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. #Thoughts and Thinking#Thoughts and Thinking

5 “ Alfred Korzybski: The map is not the territory. #Travel and Tourism#Travel and Tourism

6 “ Alfred Korzybski:If, in spite of all contrary evidence, or the lack of positive evidence, [a person] holds persistently... such affective beliefs is seriously ill, and, therefore, no amount of evidence can convince him. #Perseverance#Perseverance

7 “ Alfred Korzybski:We read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use. The guessing and ascribing of fanciful, mostly primitive-assumed structure of the world is precisely what 'philosophy' and 'metaphysics' do. The empirical search for a world-structure and the building of new languages (theories)... of similar structure... is precisely what science does.... It develops in the natural order, while metaphysics of every description uses the reversed, and ultimately a pathological order. #Books - Reading#Books - Reading

8 “ Alfred Korzybski:Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words. #Rebellion #Rebellion

9 “ Alfred Korzybski:In the rough, a symbol is a sign that stands for something... Before a noise, etc., may become a symbol, something must exist for the symbol to symbolize. #Noise#Noise

10 “ Alfred Korzybski:...a few philosophers really do important work. This applies to the so called 'critical philosophy' and to the theory of knowledge or epistemology. This class of workers I call epistemologists to avoid the disagreeable implications of the term 'philosopher'. #Philosophers and Philosophy#Philosophers and Philosophy

11 “ Alfred Korzybski:...the main achievement of Einstein was precisely in the fact that he refused to divide verbally time and space, which experimentally cannot be so divided. #Control#Control

12 “ Alfred Korzybski:It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill. #Philosophers and Philosophy#Philosophers and Philosophy

13 “ Alfred Korzybski:We should not be surprised that we find meaningless noises in the foundation of many old 'philosophies', and that from them arise most of the old 'philosophical' fights and arguments. #Philosophers and Philosophy#Philosophers and Philosophy

14 “ Alfred Korzybski:Bankers, priests, lawyers,... politicians, [and news media] constitute one class [of our rulers] and work together. They do not produce any values but manipulate the values produced by others, and often pass signs for no value at all. Scientists and teachers also comprise a ruling class. They produce the main values mankind has, but, at present, they do not realize this. They are, in the main, ruled by the cunning methods of the first class. #Politicians and Politics#Politicians and Politics

15 “ Alfred Korzybski:The main thesis of this non-Aristotelian system is that as yet we all (with extremely few exceptions) copy animals in our nervous processes, and that practically all human difficulties, mental ills... have this... component. #Education #Education

16 “ Alfred Korzybski:The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all 'knowledge' is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system. #Marriage#Marriage

17 “ Alfred Korzybski:Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation. #Experience#Experience

18 “ Alfred Korzybski: It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification -- the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life. #Mathematics#Mathematics

19 “ Alfred Korzybski:It would be interesting to see the Behaviorists deny that the writing of a mathematical treatise, or of some new theory of quantum mechanics represents a form of human behavior which they should study. Some day they must face the fact that they have neglected to consider a great many forms of human behavior — the most characteristic forms at that — and that therefore, they could not produce an adequate theory of the nature of the 'human mind'. #Behavior#Behavior

20 “ Alfred Korzybski:Our rulers: politicians, 'diplomats', bankers, priests of every description, economists, lawyers, etc. and the majority of teachers... ignorant of modern science, scientific methods, structural linguistic and semantic issues of [today] and... historical and anthropological background, without which a sane orientation is impossible.... as long as such ignorance of our rulers prevails, no solution of our human problems is possible. #Science and Scientists#Science and Scientists

21 “ Alfred Korzybski:If we consider that all we deal with represents constantly changing sub-microscopic, interrelated processes which are not, and cannot be 'identical with themselves', the old dictum that 'everything is identical with itself' becomes in [today's understanding of the universe] a principle invariably false to facts." (Note: Korzybski used "1933" to specify the current understanding. This editor has subsituted the "more general" form: [today's understanding...]) #Editing and Editors#Editing and Editors

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