422 General Semantics

General semantics is a non-Aristotelian educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) during the years 1919 to 1933. General Semantics is distinct from semantics (a sub-field of linguistics), a different subject. The name technically refers to the study of what Korzybski called "semantic reactions", or reactions of the whole human organism within the environment to some event — any event, not just perceiving a human-made symbol — with respect to the meaning of that event. However, people most commonly use the name to mean the particular system of semantic reactions that Korzybski called the most useful for human survival, that is to say delayed reactions as opposed to "signal reactions" (immediate, unthinking ones).