time-binding: the unique capability of humans to use language - and other symbol systems - to accumulate knowledge from generation to generation, such that the child can pick up where the parent left off

General semantics, formulated by Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems, is based on underlying premises, some (but not all) of which include:

• We live in a continually-changing, process-oriented world, much of which we have no means of directly observing or experiencing.
• What we do experience is therefore partial and incomplete; we abstract only a small portion of what's there - and there is always more.
• Different people abstract differently from their own individual experiences, based on their backgrounds, capabilities, interests, biases, etc.
• As we become more conscious of this abstracting process, we learn how to become more tolerant and accepting of our own - and others - limitations and potentialities.
• We recognize the distinctions between the non-verbal world in which we sense and experience, and our verbal world in which we use symbols and language to talk about what we sense and experience.
• The methods of a scientific approach provide us with a basis for evaluating and modifying our attitudes, behaviors and beliefs.

 A Short Tutorial

 A GS Sampler

 Inst of General Semantics
    (offsite)

If the world has nearly destroyed itself, it is not from lack of knowledge in the sense that we lack the knowledge to cure cancer or release atomic energy, but is due to the fact that the mass of men have not applied to public policy knowledge which they already possess, which is indeed of almost universal possession, deducible from the facts of everyday life.

If this is true—and it seems inescapable—then no education which consists mainly in the dissemination of "knowledge" can save us. If men can disregard in their policies the facts they already know, they can just as easily disregard new facts which they do not at present know.

What is needed is the development in men of that particular type of skill which will enable them to make social use of knowledge already in their possession; enable them to apply simple, sometimes self-evident, truths to the guidance of their common life.