“General semantics” is an approach and a movement founded by the Polish-American engineer and scholar Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950). A major emphasis of general semantics has been in methods for establishing better precision, e.g., by indexing words, as “man_{1, “}man_37,”  car_1,car_2, car_37; and by dating, as “Roosevelt_1930,” “Roosevelt_1940,” to indicate exactly which man or which stage of time one is referring to.

The approach has attracted  widely attention and has also influenced library and information science (e.g., Read, 1973). Eugene Garfield (1953) claims that his interest in mechanized documentation is related to his interest in general semantics: “I am often asked how I became interested in documentation, particularly mechanized documentation. It was only recently I recognized that my previous interests in subjects such as general semantics, I believe brought me quite logically to this field. Let me quote from Alfred Korzybski's, "Manhood of Humanity" where be distinguishes man from the animals and plants, and I think you will understand what I am driving at.

"And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed have the space capacity, but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them I mean the capacity to summarize, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for the developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever-increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present, and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics, and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE."

Korzybski's analysis of the dynamics of human progress was extremely perceptive, but I felt that be had failed to recognize that our ability to time-binders is dependent upon our own man-made mechanical devices - that, the way we link the past with the present is through the document, i.e., through Documentation. The continued preservation of our status as time-binders depends upon our ability to continue preserving that link. Over the centuries the form of our documents has evolved from clay tablets to papyri on up through the modern printed page and already is more accessible. “

General semantics has not been much associated with core semantic discourses such as linguistic and philosophical theories. Its basic assumptions should, however, be compared to such other theories, and some criticisms and discussions are available in the literature. Nordberg (1977), for example, has criticized general semantics as representing a radical kind of nominalism.

Literature:

Garfield, E. (1953). Librarian versus documentalist. Paper submitted to Special Libraries. Available on:  http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/librarianvsdocumentalisty1953.html

 (Visited February 11, 2004).

Korzybski, A. (1950). Manhood of humanity. Lakeville, Conn., International Non-Aristotelian Library Pub. Co.

Korzybski, A. (1933). Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Lakeville, CT: The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co.

Nordberg, R. B. (1977). General semantics as radical nominalism. ET CETERA, 1977, V34, N4, P396-404.

Read, C. S. (1973). General semantics. IN: Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Ed. By A. Kent; H. Lancour & J. E. Daily (Vol. 9, pp. 211-221). New York: Marcel Dekker.

ETC - A review of general semantics. Vol. 1-, 1943- _.

Institute for General Semantics: http://www.general-semantics.org/index.htm

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 26-02-2007

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