SOURCE: "Korzybski's General Semantics," in Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method, Cornell, 1949, pp. 221-46.

In the following excerpt, Black considers Korzybski as an innovative and influential thinker whose theories of semantics have the potential to improve the human condition.

Ever since men began to reflect critically upon the quality of their thinking, they have been conscious of the imperfections of their language. The ambitious designs of science and philosophy must be executed with no better instruments of expression than the "perfected cries of monkeys and dogs"—to use the vivid phrase of Anatole France. And centuries of effort by distinguished scholars have been devoted to the cause of linguistic improvement.

Yet the results remain disappointing; and never before has so much attention been given to the criticism and reform of symbolism. The popular name for such studies in the science of meaning is semantics—a discipline to which...