Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics Alfred Korzybski

General semantics is a program begun in the 1920s that seeks to regulate the evaluative operations performed in the brain. After partial launches under the names "human engineering" & "humanology," Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) fully launched the program as "general semantics" in 1933 with the publication of Science & Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems & General Semantics.
General semantics shouldn't be confused with generalized semantics (a branch of linguistics). Misunderstandings traceable to the discipline's name have greatly complicated the program's history & development. The sourcebook for general semantics, Science & Sanity, presents general semantics as both a theoretical & practical system whose adoption can reliably alter behavior in the direction of greater sanity. Its author asserted that general semantics training could eventually unify people. In the 1947 preface to the 3rd edition, Korzybski wrote, "We need not blind ourselves with the old dogma that 'human nature cannot be changed,' for we find that it can be changed."
Many recognized specialists in the knowledge areas where Korzybski claimed to have anchored general semantics—biology, epistemology, mathematics, neurology, physics, psychiatry, etc. supported his work in his lifetime, including Cassius J. Keyser, C.B. Bridges, W.E. Ritter, P.W. Bridgman, G.E. Coghill, Wm Alanson White, Clarence B. Farrar, David Fairchild & Erich Kähler. Starting around 1940, university English professor S.I. Hayakawa (1906–92), speech professor Wendell Johnson, speech professor Irving J. Lee etc. assembled elements of general semantics into a package suitable for incorporation into mainstream communications curricula. The Institute of General Semantics, which Korzybski & coworkers founded in 1938, continues today.