PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 1948

If thinkers will only be persuaded to lay aside their prejudices and apply
themselves to studying the evidences . . . I shall be fully content to await the final
decision.
(402) CHARLES S. PEIRCE
For the mass of mankind . . . if it is their highest impulse to be intellectual slaves,
then slaves they ought to remain. (402) CHARLES S. PEIRCE

In spite of the fact that since 1933 a great many new discoveries in sciences have
been made, to be analysed in a separate publication, the fundamental
methodological issues which led even to the release of nuclear energy remain
unaltered, and so this third edition requires no revision of the text.
Soon after the publication of the second edition in 1941, the Second American
Congress on General Semantics was held at the University of Denver. The papers
presented there have been compiled and edited by M. Kendig1 and show
applications in a wide variety of fields. A third congress, international in scope, is
being planned for 1948. Students of our work who have made applications in their
fields of interest are invited to submit papers to the Institute. The rapid spread of
interest, by now on all continents, has indicated the need for the new methods set
forth here, and many study groups have been formed here and abroad.
As the center for training in these non-aristotelian methods, the Institute of
General Semantics was incorporated in Chicago in 1938. In the summer of 1946 the
Institute moved to Lakeville, Connecticut, where its original program is being
carried on.
I must stress that I give no panaceas, but experience shows that when the
methods of general semantics are applied, the results are usually beneficial, whether
in law, medicine, business, etc., education on all levels, or personal inter-
relationships, be they in family, national, or international fields. If they are not
applied, but merely talked about, no results can be expected. Perhaps the most
telling applications were those on the battlefields of World War II, as reported by
members of the armed forces, including psychiatrists on all fronts, and especially by
Dr. Douglas M. Kelley,* formerly Lieutenant Colonel in the Medical Corps, who
reports in part as follows:
General semantics, as a modern scientific method, offers techniques which
are of extreme value both in the prevention and cure of such [pathological]
reactive patterns. In my experience with over seven thousand cases in the
European Theater of Operations, these basic principles

*
Chief Consultant in Clinical Psychology and Assistant Consultant in Psychiatry to the
European Theater of Operations; also Chief Psychiatrist in charge of the prisoners at
Nuremberg. Author of 22 Cells in Nuremberg, Greenberg, New York, 1947.
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 were daily employed as methods of group psychotherapy and as methods of
psychiatric prevention. It is obvious that the earlier the case is treated the better
the prognosis, and consequently hundreds of battalion-aid surgeons were trained
in principles of general semantics. These principles were applied (as individual
therapies and as group therapies) at every treatment level from the forward area
to the rear-most echelon, in front-line aid stations, in exhaustion centers and in
general hospitals. That they were employed with success is demonstrated by the
fact that psychiatric evacuations from the European Theater were held to a
minimum.2
The origin of this work was a new functional definition of ‘man’, as formulated
in 1921,3 based on an analysis of uniquely human potentialities; namely, that each
generation may begin where the former left off. This characteristic I called the
‘time-binding’ capacity. Here the reactions of humans are not split verbally and
elementalistically into separate ‘body’, ‘mind’, ‘emotions’, ‘intellect’, ‘intuitions’,
etc., but are treated from an organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment (external and
internal) point of view. This parallels the Einstein-Minkowski space-time
integration in physics, and both are necessitated by the modern evolution of
sciences.
This new definition of ‘man’, which is neither zoological nor mythological, but
functional and extensional (factual), requires a complete revision of what we know
about humans. If we would judge human reactions by statistical data of psychiatric
patients, or many other special groups, our understanding of ‘human nature’ must be
completely twisted. Both the zoological and mythological assumptions must limit
human society to animalistic biological, instead of time-binding psycho-biological,
evaluations, which involve socio-cultural responsibilities and thus may mark a new
period of human development.*
In Manhood of Humanity I stressed the general human unique characteristic of
time-binding, which potentially applies to all humans, leaving no place for race
prejudices. The structure of science is interwoven with Asiatic influences, which
through Africa and Spain spread over the continent of Europe, where it was further
developed. Through the discovery of factors of sanity in physico-mathematical
methods, science

*
Some readers do not like what I said about Spengler. It is perhaps because they did not read
carefully. Spengler, the mathematician and historian, dealt with the spasms of periods of
human evolution which paralleled the development of science and mathematics, and his
erudition must be acknowledged. In my honest judgment, he gave ‘a great description of the
childhood of humanity’, which he himself did not outgrow. In 1920 Sir Auckland Geddes
said, ‘In Europe, we know that an age is dying.’ And in 1941 I wrote, ‘The terrors and horrors
we are witnessing in the East and the West are the deathbed agonies of that passing epoch.’
With Spengler’s limitations, no wonder the Nazis joined hands with him. They made good
death-bedfellows, demonstrating empirically the ‘Decline of the West’,
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and sanity became linked in a structurally non-aristotelian methodology, which
became the foundation of a science of man.
We learned from anthropology that the degrees of socio-cultural developments
of different civilizations depend on their capacity to produce higher and higher
abstractions, which eventually culminate in a general consciousness of abstracting,
the very key to further human evolution, and the thesis of this book. As Whitehead
justly said, ‘A civilization which cannot burst through its current abstractions is
doomed to sterility after a very limited period of progress.’
In mankind’s cultural evolution its current abstractions became codified here and
there into systems, for instance the aristotelian system, our main concern here. Such
systematizations are important, for, as the Talmud says, ‘Teaching without a system
makes learning difficult.’ In analysing the aristotelian codifications, I had to deal
with the two-valued, ‘either-or’ type of orientations. I admit it baffled me for many
years, that practically all humans, the lowest primitives not excluded, who never
heard of Greek philosophers, have some sort of ‘either-or’ type of evaluations. Then
I made the obvious ‘discovery’ that our relations to the world outside and inside our
skins often happen to be, on the gross level, two-valued. For instance, we deal with
day or night, land or water, etc. On the living level we have life or death, our heart
beats or not, we breathe or suffocate, are hot or cold, etc. Similar relations occur on
higher levels. Thus, we have induction or deduction, materialism or idealism,
capitalism or communism, democrat or republican, etc. And so on endlessly on all
levels.
In living, many issues are not so sharp, and therefore a system which posits the
general sharpness of ‘either-or’, and so objectifies ‘kind’, is unduly limited; it must
be revised and made more flexible in terms of ‘degree’. This requires a physico-
mathematical ‘way of thinking’, which a non-aristotelian system supplies.
Lately the words ‘semantics’ and ‘semantic’ have become widely used, and
generally misused, even by important writers, thus leading to hopeless confusion.
‘Semantics’ is a name for an important branch of philology, as complex as life itself,
couched in appropriate philological terms, and as such has no direct application to
life problems. The ‘significs’ of Lady Welby was closer to life, but gave no
techniques for application, and so did not relate linguistic structures to the structures
of non-verbal levels by which we actually live. In modern times, with their growing
complexities, a theory of values, with extensional tech-

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niques for educational guidance and self-guidance, became imperative. Such a
theory, the first to my knowledge, required a modern scientific approach, and this
was found in physico-mathematical methods (space-time) and the foundations of
mathematics. It originated in 1921 in Manhood of Humanity, was formulated in a
methodological outline in my papers in 1924, 1925, and 1926, and in 1933 it
culminated in the present volume.
My work was developed entirely independently of ‘semantics’, ‘significs’,
‘semiotic’, ‘semasiology’, etc., although I know today and respect the works of the
corresponding investigators in those fields, who explicitly state they do not deal
with a general theory of values. Those works do not touch my field, and as my work
progressed it has become obvious that a theory of ‘meaning’ is impossible (page xv
ff.), and ‘significs’, etc., are unworkable. Had I not become acquainted with those
accomplishments shortly before publication of this book, I would have labelled my
work by another name, but the system would have remained fundamentally
unaltered. The original manuscript did not contain the word, semantics, or
‘semantic’, but when I had to select some terms, from a time-binding point of view
and in consideration of the efforts of others, I introduced the term ‘General
Semantics’ for the modus operandi of this first non-aristotelian system. This seemed
appropriate for historical continuity. A theory of evaluation appeared to follow
naturally in an evolutionary sense from 1) ‘meaning’ to 2) ‘significance’ to 3)
evaluation. General Semantics turned out to be an empirical natural science of non-
elementalistic evaluation, which takes into account the living individual, not
divorcing him from his reactions altogether, nor from his neuro-linguistic and
neuro-semantic environments, but allocating him in a plenum of some values, no
matter what.
The present theory of values involves a clear-cut, workable discipline, limited to
its premises, a fact which is often disregarded by some readers and writers. They
seem also often unaware of the core of the inherent difficulties in these age-old
problems, and the solutions available through changing not the language, but the
structure of language, achieved by the habitual use of the extensional devices in our
evaluational reactions.
For instance, in Ten Eventful Years, an Encyclopaedia Britannica publication,
appears an article on ‘Semantics, General Semantics’, which considerably increases
the current confusions concerning these subjects. It is not even mentioned that
‘semantics’ is a branch of philology, nor is there any clarifying discrimination made
between the noun ‘semantics’ and the adjective ‘semantic’. Moreover it has many
misstatements and even falsifications of my work and the work of others, and some
statements make no sense.

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 Fortunately there is another popular publication, the American People’s
Encyclopedia, which is publishing a reliable article on general semantics.
It is not generally realized that with human progress, the complexities and
difficulties in the world increase following an exponential function of ‘time’, with
indefinitely accelerating accelerations. I am deeply convinced that these problems
cannot be solved at all unless we boldly search for and revise our antiquated notions
about the ‘nature of man’ and apply modern extensional methods toward their
solution.
Fortunately at present we have an international body, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,4 which with its vast funds, has
the services of the best men in the world, and a splendid program. It is true that they
are very handicapped by dependence on translations, which seldom convey the same
implications in different languages. Yet this need not be a handicap, for the methods
of exact sciences disregard national boundaries, and so the extensional methods and
devices of general semantics can be applied to all existing languages, with deep
psycho-logical effects on the participants and through them on their countrymen.
Thus the world would gain an international common denominator for inter-
communication, mutual understanding, and eventual agreement. I would suggest
that students of general semantics write on this subject. The activities of this
international body after all affect all of us.
We need not blind ourselves with the old dogma that ‘human nature cannot be
changed’, for we find that it can be changed. We must begin to realize our
potentialities as humans, then we may approach the future with some hope. We may
feel with Galileo, as he stamped his foot on the ground after recanting the
Copernican theory before the Holy Inquisition, ‘Eppur si muove !’ The evolution of
our human development may be retarded, but it cannot be stopped.
A. K.
Lakeville, Connecticut
October, 1947

REFERENCES

1. KENDIG, M., Editor. Papers from the Second American Congress on General Semantics.
Institute of General Semantics, 1943
2. KORZYBSKI, A. A Veteran’s Re-Adjustment and Extensional Methods. ETC.: A Review
of General Semantics, Vol. III, No. 4. See also
SAUNDERS, CAPTAIN JAMES, USN (Ret.). Memorandum. Training of Officers for the
Naval Service: Hearings Before the Committee on Naval Affairs, United States Senate,
June 12 and 13, 1946, pp. 55-57. U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.,
1946
3. KORZYBSKI, A. Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering. E. P.
Dutton, New York, 1921 , 2nd ed., Institute of General Semantics, Lakeville, Conn.,
Distributors, 1948.
4. HUXLEY, JULIAN. UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy. Public Affairs Press,
Washington, D. C., 1947.

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