The Problems Of Knowing What Korzybski Actually Taught

The problems of knowing what Korzybski actually taught started to get complicated even during his lifetime as inadequate popularizers—the most prominent of whom was probably S.I. Hayakawa—began the process of watering it down. This became one of the major hassles at the end of Korzybski's life that he had to deal with. The not-so-pleasant details of his conflict with Hayakawa and other of his students, takes up a good part of the last section of my Korzybski: A Biography.

After Korzybski's death, Hayakawa very much became Mr. General Semantics, in the eyes of the media and general public, and through his own writing and his editorship of ETC. then published by the International Society of General Semantics (ISGS). Although, he did help promulgate knowledge and interest in Korzybski's work to some extent, at the same time his work gave the impression to many that they had gotten Korzybski's essence from reading his, Hayakawa's, and others' more limited, non-rigorous takes.

Meanwhile, the Institute of General Semantics (IGS), founded by Korzybski and run by his students and student's students, remained the center of specifically korzybskian general-semantics, with publication of the GSB and books by Korzybski and others as well as an ongoing educational training program continued for just over fifty years after Korzybski's death.

However, over the last 10 years, that korzybskian thread got snipped and lost at the Institute of General Semantics. The ISGS folded, the IGS took over its assets, mainly some bookstore books, some documents, and the journal ETC. GSB got retired with no fanfare and we now have people running the IGS who for better or worse were never significantly involved in studying, transmitting, and building upon the specific korzybskian tradition that existed there before their time. The present IGS seems more in the pattern  of the old ISGS rather than the old IGS  with, for example, ETC. now the official IGS journal. This kind of thing can happen. People die and move away, etc. Others who get involved afterwards don't know what happened before them and fail to ask necessary questions. History and tradition gets forgotten. It may happen especially to organizations that have been around for a long while. As a result, the long-term culture of the organization can  sometimes change drastically. It has happened at the Institute of General Semantics (founded in 1938). Dating. 

The fact remains that now the IGS has lost a large part of the specific korzybskian tradition (much of it 'oral') that developed there. For example, I don't see how anyone of my teachers and co-workers in the old IGS would have chosen to name a book award after S.I. Hayakawa—with all due respect to him (he did do some good work along with all the confusion he caused). I have written about this institutional loss of memory publicly, addressing the issue directly in my presentation at the 2011 IGS International Conference in New York City, where I was given the IGS's 2011 S.I. Hayakawa Book Prize (Oh, the irony). Here's a link to the audio and text of my presentation: http://korzybskifiles.blogspot.com/2011/11/korzybskis-legacy-what-is-it-how-do-we.html

As one of the few alive, like Jeff Mordkowitz and my wife Susan Presby Kodish, who apprenticed with Korzybski's students, I feel an obligation now to help inform everyone interested of what that tradition consists of. I 'inherited' (as the person appointed by Charlotte Schuchardt Read to serve as Korzybski's literary executor following her and Robert Pula) a tremendous amount of material after the IGS closed Read House in Texas in 2009 (and then the nearby rented office in 2010). I intend to share as much as I can of the material that I have from there as well the large amount of stuff I've gathered over a lifetime of korzybskian study and research. 

But people who care  and desire to learn must ask questions.

Will you dare to inquire?  

Abstracting in Philosophy, Science and Everyday Life

The central korzybskian notion of abstracting resonates with the work of Kant, Schopenhauer and other philosophers who had previously explored this epistemological territory. 

For example, Schopenhauer, who built upon Kant’s work, very much seemed to be talking about abstracting when he wrote:

‘The world is my idea’ [This has also been translated as ‘The world is my representation’]: this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though only man can bring it into reflected, abstract consciousness. If he really does this, philosophical discretion has evolved in him. It then becomes clear to him, and certain, that he knows not a sun, and not an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him exists only as an idea – that is, only in relation to something else, the one who conceives the idea, which is himself." (1)

What, then, makes Korzybski's model of abstracting special?: it brings previous philosophical discussion about epistemology (how we know what we 'think' we know) into a scientific, naturalistic framework, one that is workable both for further research and application in everyday life. My korzybskian transformation of the passage from Schopenhauer reads:

Anything I experience or know about the ‘world’ consists of my abstractions: this truth, as far as I know, holds good for everything that lives and knows, though only a human can bring it into reflected consciousness. If one really does know this, philosophical-scientific-mathematical discretion (consciousness of abstracting) has evolved. It then becomes clear, and as ‘certain’ as anything, that one knows not a ‘sun’, and not an ‘earth’, but only the result of one’s eye-brain-nervous-system transactions with a ‘sun’ and hand-brain-nervous-system transactions with an ‘earth’. Each one of us participates in the ‘world’ as an integral part of it. The ‘world’ (which includes what is called “the body”) exists—as each of us experiences and knows it—only in terms of abstractions at various levels. These abstractions exist only in relation to something else, the one who abstracts, oneself.

This notion of abstracting provides a key for Korzybski’s critique of aristotelianism in philosophy, science and everyday life. (2)

1. The World As Will and Idea. Abridged in One Volume. Ed. & Trans., Berman & Berman. London: Everyman. 

2. This passage from Dare to Inquire: Sanity and Survival for the 21st Century and Beyond, p. 157.

Science and Sanity at 80

This month, October 2013, marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. 

When the book finally came out on October 10, 1933, the U.S. was in the first year of F.D.R.'s first administration. Despite whatever lift people's spirits may have had from the president's multiordinal, inaugural day reassurance in March that they had nothing to fear but fear itself, from his "New Deal" plans, and from the much anticipated ending of alcohol prohibition; the U.S. still seemed sunk in the depths of the Great Depression. Internationally, news didn't seem so good to Korzybski either: Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany and the Nazi Party had begun to consolidate its tyrannical control there. Along with Stalin, ensconced in Soviet Russia, and the Japanese Empire spreading itself across East Asia, the world didn't seem like such a happy place. To Korzybski, with what he called his "theory of sanity", it seemed like as good a time as any to offer his own infusion of sanity, as much as the world could take.

It was no easy task. He had begun writing what would become Science and Sanity in 1921, just after the publication of his first book, Manhood of Humanity. It had taken 12  demanding years devoted to writing and research. By 1932 with the book mainly done, Korzybski and his wife Mira turned down a few publishers willing to publish the book if Korzybski could guarantee the production cost by means of advanced sales. Under such terms the book could sell for as much as $10 retail (over $100 in today's money), a price that surely would have put off most potential readers during a major economic depression. Instead, the Korzybskis started The International Non-Aristotelian Library and Publishing Company (INALPCO), financed primarily through Mira's work painting portraits on ivory for "the rotten rich" (as they sometimes referred to her  wealthy clients). As self-publishers they could offer the book for a more reasonable "educational discount" price of $5.50, when ordered directly from their printer/distributor, Science Press. 

With the Korzybskis' considerable expenses in getting the book published (they remained in debt for a few years afterwards), the book's price certainly wasn't intended to make them rich. But Korzybski offered his "educational discount" to make the book as accessible and as available as possible to his main audience: the 'average intelligent layman'. And he never wavered from his view that the work that his book introduced, perplexingly labeled "general semantics", was not intended mainly for academic and scientific/technical specialists, but for that average intelligent man, woman, and even child, on the street. For years, he had paid membership dues to a British group, The World Association for Adult Education whose motto seemed just in line with his own efforts: "The multitude of the wise is the welfare of the world." 

Until his death 17 years later, Korzybski developed the implications of his work, promoting research, refining his insights, and reaching thousands of students individually and in group seminars, mainly through the auspices of the Institute of General Semantics which he founded in Chicago as a non-profit educational organization in 1938 with a few of his close students, his most serious "co-workers" as he liked to call them. 

By the time of his death on March 1, 1950, he had already  made a notable cultural impact in the U.S. and elsewhere, reaching perhaps the high point of critical appreciation of his work. Numerous popularizations of his work had already appeared. By 1949, one year before his death, he had begun receiving serious academic recognition at such places as Yale University, where he was invited by faculty there to conduct a seminar and lecture; the Cooper Union, where he addressed an audience of about 800 people on "Time-Binding: The Foundation for General Semantics"; the University of Denver where he taught a seminar before attending the "Third American Congress on General Semantics", sponsored by that university; and the University of Texas where he was the only independent, non-academic scholar invited to present a paper as part of a symposium on perception, along with a panel of some of the best and brightest figures in the behavioral/social sciences of that period. (Korzybski died while completing the editing and his  personal secretary and literary assistant, Charlotte Schuchardt, went to Texas alone to present his final paper, "The Role of Language in the Perceptual Processes".)

Since his death, Korzybski's bright light has slowly faded. With the hindsight of 80 years since Science and Sanity's publication, what Korzybski actually taught has gotten somewhat obscured by the perpetuation of the errors made by a torrent of inept but influential critics, like Martin Gardner. Perhaps even more damagingly, it has gotten obscured by 'followers' like S. I. Hayakawa whose light and popular writing on 'semantics' showed an inadequate grasp of Korzybski's work, focusing mainly on Hayakawa's limited applications to language teaching, just one aspect of Korzybski's substantial, deep, and multi-faceted general theory of human evaluation. Depending on inadequate accounts as well as simply through the passage of time, Korzybski's work has thus become widely unread and, where acknowledged, often misread and superficially understood. 

But if you hear the siren call to plumb the depths of Korzybski's system of applied epistemology and his foundational framework for human knowledge and personal and social sanity, there is no substitute to reading Science and Sanity, now in its Fifth Edition. (Don't forget Manhood of Humanity and Collected Writings either!) Don't get put off by the size of the book or mathematical formulas within. Those of you who hear the call, may actually find Science and Sanity—and his other works—as I do: compellingly written with a rare combination of clarity, rigor, wit, and usefulness for living. 

And finally a shameless plug.  If you do feel that you need to ease into Korzybski's own writing with some introductory reading first, Drive Yourself Sane, written by myself and my wife Susan and now in its Third Edition, does present Korzybski's system in a brief, but accurate and comprehensive manner. Following that, there exists no better source than my own Korzybski: A Biography if you wish to follow Korzybski's own advice that "...when you read a book. Read not only what you read, but study the author." Korzybski: A Biography captures the adventure of his extraordinary life while tracing in detail the development of his work. Then, you'll definitely be ready to tackle Science and Sanity, and the rest of his work as well.  

From the Stray Thought Bin - Wonders of the World

Despite its many horrors, the world remains a place of many wonders to explore. And you the wonderer, not apart from the world, remain among the most wondrous parts of it. 

From the Stray Thought Bin - Becoming/Developing/Consciousness

Do you really want to develop 'more consciousness'?

"More consciousness", what do you mean?

Do you actually know what it will cost you? 

What it will cost you to more clearly see? 

Those strange dots of high weirdness growing? 

Strange outbreaks of madness you say "Glory Be!" 

Do you even take any much notice? 

You notice and quick look away? 

Do you really want to know?

Who or what are you trying to be? 

To be.

To be. 

TO BE YOU.

Do you? 

Do you? 

Do you think?

Much more important can you feel as you see? 

From The Stray Thought Bin - "Skeptics and Skeptics"

The best skeptics not only doubt, but doubt their doubt and often doubt that too. 

India Notes 2013: Swastikas

Everywhere I looked I found swastikas.

India Notes 2013: A 'Stickle' Warning!

At Jaipur National University, where the B.K. Parekh Centre

held its National Workshop, the dorm room I stayed in could

get very cold at night, but we were warned very stickle, "No

electrical hitters!"

GS & Stoicism: A Personal View

GS has stoicism in its family tree, as I noted in this article here a short while ago. Guillaume Andrieu, the Editor of the New Stoa Newsletter has just published an interview with me where I discuss in more detail my own history with stoicism and discuss its relationship with Korzybski's work.  Here it is: New Stoa Spotlight on Bruce Kodish

From the Stray Thought Bin - 'Word Is Not Thing'

Words as words can qualify as 'things' as well. And the words about those things are not those things either. Some people, strangely, seem to have difficulty understanding that. Words seem quite slippery things, don't they? 

From the Stray Thought Bin - 'The Heroic Task of Every Generation'

The heroic task of every generation of time-binders (that's us humans): appropriating our inheritance from those who came before us. Every generation does the task to some degree poorly or well. What makes the task heroic?: The stakes are always high and for every new generation, including our own, its particular inheritance is never the same as—indeed is necessarily different than—any that came before. 

Steven Lewis Review of Korzybski: A Biography

I've known Biology professor Steven Lewis for a number of years and he definitely qualifies as one of only a handful of people worldwide whom I consider genuine Korzybski scholars (it's a small small 'pond', folks). So his opinion about my biography of Korzybski definitely counts for me. I'm happy to say he liked it. He wouldn't B.S. me and I wouldn't want him to. Here's what he says about it: "At last, a book-length biography of Korzybski.".

"Korzybski's Legacy: What Is It? How Do We Carry It On?" - presented by Bruce I. Kodish, Author of Korzybski: A Biography, at the 2011 Institute of General Semantics (IGS) Weekend Symposium, "Communicating in the 21st Century", on 10/29/11 at the Princeton Club, New York City

Here are links to the text and audio of the presentation I gave at the Institute of General Semantics (IGS) Symposium - "Communicating in the 21st Century" on Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 at the Princeton Club in New York City. 


Marty Levinson, President of the IGS Board of Trustees introduced me to the group. Marty organized a great conference and I want to thank him and the IGS Board for inviting me and being willing to listen even though I had some difficult things to say about the present state of GS and the IGS. I felt nervous delivering this talk and you'll probably tell when you hear it.  But I consider it one of the most important presentations I've ever made, and a valuable one for someone who wants to get a running start as to what Korzybski and his work are about. 


Here's the opening paragraph:
Korzybski’s legacy: what ‘is’ it? How do we carry it on? In the way that I’m using the term legacy here, as “a thing handed down by a predecessor,” Korzybski’s legacy has a number of related aspects. Partly, it consists of tangible objects: artifacts and archives left behind. Partly it consists of the Institute of General Semantics itself. However, mainly today I want to focus on what Korzybski taught, the legacy of the wide-ranging system of formulations, known as GS (‘general semantics’). Korzybski advised that when you study someone’s work “…read not only what you read, but study the author.”[1] In other words, do your best to get inside his or her head, find out what problems they tackled, what questions they asked, what they wanted to say. I’ve studied the author and I want to share with you some of what I’ve learned about Korzybski’s work. What constitutes the core of what he taught, his legacy? How has it come down to the present? What opportunities exist for us now to carry it on?

---

[1] Korzybski: A Biography, p. 8

I want to thank my friend Heron Stone of Gendo for his help in editing the audio recording and getting it up on the Gendo podcast, which I heartily suggest that you subscribe to. He's the closest thing to an internet Socrates I've met. 


Here's the audio link of Gendo Podcast 689


Here's a link to the pdf of the edited and augmented text  

"Acceptance Speech" by Bruce Kodish on receiving the 2011 S. I. Hayakawa Book Prize from the Institute of General Semantics for Korzybski: A Biography

It seemed like just a few days after Steve Jobs died that his biography came out. It took 61 year for Alfred Korzybski's. Why did it take so long? Interesting question, I'm not going to answer now. But if you wonder why I wrote Korzybski: A Biography, I thought it had been long enough.


My friend Robert P. Pula, extraordinary scholar and teacher of korzybskian general-semantics and a former Executive Director of the Institute of General Semantics, had been working on a biography of Korzybski for many years. After he died unexpectedly in early 2004, I felt impelled 'to pick up the torch'. What Korzybski and his co-workers developed and taught was not entirely written down but had an oral and tacit dimension received through personal contact and handed down in often unspoken and even un-speakable, i.e., silent and non-verbal, ways. As a long-time close friend and co-worker of Charlotte Schuchardt Read—Korzybski's confidential secretary and literary assistant—I wanted to convey the feel of Korzybski and his work that I had gotten from her (and others) which I feared might otherwise get lost. 


I first encountered Korzybski's work in the early 1960s around the age of 13. I've studied it most of my life and worked at the Institute of General Semantics on its education and publication staffs for several decades in its post-Korzybski but still quite korzybskian heyday in the latter half of the 20th Century. I pursued and obtained a doctoral degree in Applied Epistemology/'General Semantics'. I spent seven years researching and writing Korzybski: A Biography. In all that time, I've managed to learn something. So don't be intimidated by the size of my book (694 pages including endnotes, bibliography and index): If you want to get to the core of what Korzybski taught, then I think that all of my time will save you a great deal of your own time. Besides, I did my best to make it a good read.


To conclude: I want to thank Marty Levinson [President of the IGS Board of Trustees], Jackie Rudig [IGS Vice-President] and the entire Institute Board of Trustees for giving me this award and for the opportunity to be here with all of you. Let's celebrate Korzybski here, his work, all of those who've carried it on and built upon it up to the present. And let's celebrate the Institute of General Semantics, which had its 73rd anniversary this year. Let's do it!


—Bruce I. Kodish, 
October 28, 2011