Alfred Korzybski

Alfred Korzybski
Born	Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (1879-07-03)July 3, 1879 Warsaw, Vistula Country, Russian Empire
Died	March 1, 1950(1950-03-01) (aged 70) Lakeville, Connecticut, U.S.
Alma mater	Warsaw University of Technology
Spouse	Mira Edgerly ​ (m. 1919)​
Era	Modern philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy American philosophy Polish philosophy
Institutions	Institute of General Semantics
Main interests	Engineering Logic Mathematics Philosophy Semantics
Notable ideas	General semantics The map is not the territory

Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (/kɔːrˈzɪbski, -ˈzɪp-, -ˈʒɪp-, kəˈʒɪpski/,^[1][2] Polish: [ˈalfrɛt kɔˈʐɨpskʲi]; 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".