{"id":1145,"date":"2011-01-22T15:50:19","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T20:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2011-01-22T15:50:19","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T20:50:19","slug":"korzybskiism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/2011\/01\/22\/korzybskiism\/","title":{"rendered":"Korzybskiism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alfred Korzybski introduced\u00a0his notion of non-aristotelian thinking over three editions of his book\u00a0Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One stumbling block for people learning about his ideas (contained within the subject called “general semantics”) is the term “non-aristotelian.”\u00a0 Readers probably don’t know what “aristotelian” means.\u00a0 If they think they do, they might wonder what aspect of Aristotle’s life is negated with the term “non-aristotelian.”\u00a0 Was Korzybski negating Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics<\/em>?\u00a0 Or his Poetics<\/em>?\u00a0 Or something else?\u00a0 Just reading the word “non-aristotelian” offers no clues.<\/p>\n

In truth, Korzybski uses the term in a rather particular way.\u00a0 Fortunately, though, he provides a lot of examples of what is represented by the term “non-aristotelian,” and what is represented by its counterpart term, “aristotelian.”\u00a0 Consult the Second Edition of his book for a list of what constitutes each kind of thinking, but for some rough synonyms, think “modern scientific” for “non-aristotelian” and “pre-modern scientific (or even pseudo- and unscientific)” for “aristotelian.”<\/p>\n

But with these relatively easy synonyms at hand, I find that the word “non-aristotelian” requires maybe a bit more clarification.\u00a0 If general semantics is considered but one<\/em> non-aristotelian system, how do we distinguish it from others?<\/p>\n

I propose this term: “korzybskian.”\u00a0 It’s not an unfamiliar term, but it might be unfamiliar within this particular context.\u00a0 What I propose is that we use the word “korzybskian” to denote the specific kind of non-aristotelian thinking Korzybski talks about in Science and Sanity<\/em> and in general semantics as a whole.\u00a0 That is, Korzybski’s non-aristotelian thinking is korzybskian thinking.\u00a0 And as a result, “korzybskian”\u00a0inherits the meaning\u00a0“modern scientific.”<\/p>\n

So non-aristotelianism would be korzybskiism.\u00a0 And the modern scientific thinking that Korzybski promotes would be korzybskian thinking that he promotes.<\/p>\n

This suggests that S. I.\u00a0Hayakawa’s thinking within general semantics (which Korzybski inevitably took issue with) might be termed “hayakawan thinking.”\u00a0 Or maybe it could be called “korzybskian thinking to an extent.”\u00a0 Any of us within general semantics probably exhibit korzybskian thinking to varying extents.\u00a0 We’re non-aristotelians, but we’re specifically korzybskian<\/em> non-aristotelians.<\/p>\n

Should another non-aristotelian formulator come along to take issue with aristotelian thinking, and develop something distinct from korzybskian thinking, then there would be that new formulator’s ism.\u00a0 Is there as much room for another, as Korzybski suggests?\u00a0 It’s hard for me to tell.<\/p>\n

From aristotelianism to korzybskiism.<\/em><\/p>\n

Quite an honor, Count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alfred Korzybski introduced\u00a0his notion of non-aristotelian thinking over three editions of his book\u00a0Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. One stumbling block for people learning about his ideas (contained within the subject called “general semantics”) is the term “non-aristotelian.”\u00a0 Readers probably don’t know what “aristotelian” means.\u00a0 If they think they do, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[94,152,288,153,289,81,69,207],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-alfred-korzybski","tag-aristotelianism","tag-korzbyskiism","tag-non-aristotelianism","tag-s-i-hayakawa","tag-science","tag-science-and-sanity","tag-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1149,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}