Korzybski, Alfred - Anatol Rapoport (essay date 1976)
Anatol Rapoport (essay date 1976)
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 entire page is 6636 words long]
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