Alfred Korzybski
| Alfred Korzybski | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
July 3, 1879 Warsaw, Vistula Country, Russian Empire |
| Died | March 1, 1950 (aged 70) Lakeville, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Fields | Engineer, philosopher, mathematician |
| Alma mater | Warsaw University of Technology |
| Spouse | Mira Edgerly |
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski ([kɔˈʐɨpski]; July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950) was a Polish-American independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, the field of semantics. He argued that human knowledge of the world is limited both by the human nervous system and the languages humans have developed, and thus no one can have direct access to reality, given that the most we can know is that which is filtered through the brain's responses to reality. His best known dictum is "The map is not the territory".
Korzybski was born in Warsaw, Poland which at that time was part of the Russian Empire. He was part of an Polish family whose members had worked as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers for generations. He learned the Polish language at home and the Russian language in schools; and having a French governess and a German governess, he became fluent in these four languages as a child.
Korzybski was educated at the Warsaw University of Technology in engineering. During the First World War Korzybski served as an intelligence officer in the Russian Army. After being wounded in a leg and suffering other injuries, he moved to North America in 1916 (first to Canada, then the United States) to coordinate the shipment of artillery to Russia. He also lectured to Polish-American audiences about the conflict, promoting the sale of war bonds. After the War, he decided to remain in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1940. He met Mira Edgerly, a painter of portraits on ivory, shortly after the Armistice, and married her in January 1919. Their marriage lasted until his death.
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