The expression “the map is not the territory” first appeared in print in a paper that Alfred Korzybski gave at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1931: [1]
* A) A map may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of the territory…
* B) A map is not the territory.
It is used as a premise in Korzybski’s General Semantics, and in neuro-linguistic programming.
The Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte illustrated the concept of “perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves”[2] in a number of paintings including a famous work entitled The Treachery Of Images, which consists of a drawing of a pipe with the caption, Ceci n’est pas une pipe (”This is not a pipe”).
This concept occurs in the discussion of exoteric and esoteric religions. Exoteric concepts are concepts which can be fully conveyed using descriptors and language constructs, such as mathematics. Esoteric concepts are concepts which cannot be fully conveyed except by direct experience. For example, a person who has never tasted an apple will never fully understand through language what the taste of an apple is. Only through direct experience (eating an apple) can that experience be fully understood.
Lewis Carroll, in Sylvie and Bruno (1889), made the point humorously with his description of a fictional map that had “the scale of a mile to the mile.” A character notes some practical difficulties with such a map and states that “we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”
In a sort of counterpoint to Lewis Carroll, the University of Cambridge economist Joan Robinson (1962) emphasized the disutility of 1:1 maps and other overly detailed models: “A model which took account of all the variegation of reality would be of no more use than a map at the scale of one to one.”
Related Leave a Comment
No comments yet.