Alfred Korzybski Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Anatol Rapoport

Critical Essay by Anatol Rapoport

SOURCE: "What I Think Korzybski Thought—and What I Think about It," in ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, December, 1976, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 351-65.

In the following essay, Rapoport reminisces about his first exposure to Korzybski's principles and remembers the author as an inept instructor and sloppy thinker.

I first heard the word "semantics" when a classmate at the University of Chicago recited a satirical poem in a campus coffee shop. In the poem "semantics" rhymed with "antics," and it ended something like this:

"He could pass, were he but pinker
 As, who knows, perhaps a thinker."

To which someone added, "as it is, he is a stinker." The epigram was aimed at Bertrand Russell, who had just given a lecture and shocked the left-wing students by advocating accommodation to Hitler's demands in preference to war. Aged 26, I was, I think, the oldest freshman at the University...
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