Alfred Korzybski

Korzybski, Alfred (Habdank Skarbek) (b. July 3, 1879, Warsaw, Pol., Russian Empire--d. March 1, 1950, Sharon, Conn., U.S.), Polish-born American scientist and philosopher known as the originator of general semantics (q.v.), a system of linguistic philosophy that attempts to increase humanity's capacity to transmit ideas from generation to generation (what Korzybski called man's "time-binding capacity") through the study and refinement of ways of using and reacting to language.

During World War I, Korzybski served in the intelligence department of the Russian army general staff and in 1915 was sent on a military mission to the United States and Canada. With the collapse of the tsarist regime in 1917, he remained in the United States to serve as secretary of the French-Polish military mission, later becoming a U.S. citizen. His best-known work is Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1933), a critique of traditional assumptions about language.

Lit Ref

Propaedia 514.F.5 : Semantics: the study of language and meaning

Propaedia 10/52.B.9 : The philosophy of language

Other Bio

A more detailed biography, written by a general semanticist, can be found here.