Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering

Count Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (1879- 1950), was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist most remembered for developing the theory of general semantics. Korzybski was educated at the Warsaw University of Technology. During the First World War he served as an intelligence officer in the Russian Army. His first book, Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering, was published in 1921. In the book, he proposed and explained in detail a new theory of humankind: mankind as a time-binding class of life. Korzybski’s work culminated in the founding of a discipline that he called general semantics (GS). As Korzybski explicitly said, GS should not be confused with semantics, a different subject. The basic principles of general semantics, which include time-binding, are outlined in Science and Sanity, published in 1933. In 1938 Korzybski founded the Institute of General Semantics and directed it until his death in Lakeville, Connecticut, USA.