identity

time-binding

writing

nationality

American

Polish

occupation / innovator as

linguist

philosopher

innovator in the field of

general semantics

linguistics

philosophy

mathematician

engineer

engineering

is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named.

This principle, made famous by Alfred Korzybski, strikes at many levels. It reminds us in a general way

Let us go back to the original statement for which Korzybski is most famous the statement that the map isnotthe territory. This statement came out of a very wide range of philosophic thinking, going back to Greece, and wriggling through the history of European thought over the last two thousand years. In this history, there has been a sort of rough dichotomy and often deep controversy. There has been a violent enmity and bloodshed. (Bateson 1970 : 5)

is the capacity possessed by humans alone 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.

Korzybski distinguished between the classes of life in the following manner : Since plants captured one kind of energy, converted it into another, and stored it up, he defined the plant class of life as the characterized by the freedom and faculty to move about in space he defined animals as the space-binding class of life . 'And now what shall we say of human beings'' asks Korzybski, 'What is to be our definition of Man' Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding 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 j 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 .'a

is done to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds.

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds. Alfred Kazin

Alfred KorzybskiThinkers

Alfred Korzybski