Shri. Balvant K. Parekh Receives the 2011 J. Talbot Winchell Award

The Executive Committee of the Institute of General Semantics selected Balvant K. Parekh, the founder of Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences and Chairman of Pidilite Industries to receive the 2011 J. Talbot Winchell Award, a prize that goes to individuals for outstanding contributions and services to the field of general semantics. The award will be presented during the Alfred Korzybski lecture/ symposium on 28 October 2011 at the Princeton Club in New York . Mr. Parekh is the first Asian to receive this award. Milton Dawes, Bruce Kodish, Susan Kodish, Kenneth G. Johnson and many other eminent general semanticists have received this prestigious award before.

General Semantics emphasizes the complex relationship between language and human behaviour and the unique human ability to pass information and knowledge across time which Korzybski, the founder of the discipline, calls time-binding. It is concerned with the assumptions underlying all symbol systems and their impact on human lives, communications and social behaviour. General Semantics world view trains the human mind to be more aware of and sensitive to the use of language or any other symbol system for comprehension and communication. General Semantics gives one the ability to adapt to change. Korzybski conceptualized General Semantics during a historical juncture of world wide turmoil and bloodshed. The insights from the World Wars have helped him ponder about the deeply ingrained problems in human thinking and actions and the solutions that would rescue the humanity from total destruction. General Semantics is a plea for overcoming the fundamental flaws in human perceptions, uncritical acceptance of what is taken to be ‘age old truths.’ This understanding of Korzybski makes General Semantics non-Aristotelian, non-Newtonian and non-theological in nature. General Semantics makes the practitioner more tolerant and open to ideas and develops in one an ability to think independently and constructively. For the same reason, it has great usefulness in pedagogy and tackling conflicts. Consciousness of abstracting implied in the tenet ‘Map is not the Territory, Word is not the Thing Defined’ has influenced the informed discernment of ‘reality’ especially in the case of media and helps one to be insular to the deception of symbols, and hence less vulnerable and more alert.

Balvant K. Parekh’s approach has revolutionized the study and understanding of General Semantics in India . A voracious reader of the texts of general semantics and a practicing general semanticist, Mr. Parekh continues to benefit from the ideas of Korzybski and his fellow thinkers. In his personal and professional life, he creatically (creatively and critically) applies the principles of General Semantics and the results have always been remarkable. True to his policy of sharing the best of everything with others, Balvant Parekh decided to establish a Centre which would familiarize the people of India with General Semantics.

By incorporating the study of human sciences and including issues like media, communication, culture studies, health, education, etc. under the rubric of general semantics, he could save general semantics from disciplinary stagnation and isolation. This definitely makes general semantics more dynamic and useful. The Centre not only engages in an academic pursuit of the discipline of general semantics as a philosophical discipline, but also promotes the awareness of it in the contexts of everyday practices and actual lived experiences and situations among people from different walks of life.