author
Alfred Korzybski
1879–1950
Best known for creating general semantics, this Polish-born thinker explored how language shapes the way people understand the world. His work has influenced readers interested in communication, logic, psychology, and the limits of words themselves.
1 Audiobook
Manhood of Humanity.
by Alfred Korzybski
About the author
Born in Warsaw on July 3, 1879, Alfred Korzybski later became a Polish-American philosopher and independent scholar. During World War I, he served in the intelligence department of the Russian army general staff and was sent on a mission to the United States and Canada before eventually settling in the U.S.
Korzybski is remembered above all as the founder of general semantics, an approach that examined how language, symbols, and habits of thought affect human understanding. He presented these ideas most fully in Science and Sanity (1933), a book that became his best-known work.
He spent much of his later life teaching, writing, and developing these ideas, and he helped establish the Institute of General Semantics in 1938. Korzybski died on March 1, 1950, but his central insight—that words are not the same as the reality they describe—continues to attract readers across many fields.