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			{{Short description\|Relationship between an object and a representation of that object}}
	The '''map/territory relation'''—the relationship between ] and ]—is one of the lasting ] quandaries.
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			The '''map–territory relation''' is the relationship between an object and a representation of that ], as in the relation between a geographical territory and a ] of it. '''Mistaking the map for the territory''' is a ] that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents. Polish-American scientist and philosopher ] remarked that "the map is not the territory" and that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view that an ] derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse ]s of reality with reality itself. These ideas are crucial to ], a system Korzybski originated.

			The relationship has also been expressed in other terms, such as "the model is not the data", "]", and ]'s "The menu is not the meal."{{efn\|Widely attributed to Alan Watts, "The menu is not the meal" may be an unrecorded quote, or it may be a paraphrase derived from two recorded quotes: 1) "Money simply represents wealth in rather the same way that the menu represents the dinner."<ref>{{cite web \|url=https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/not-what-should-be-but-what-is/ \|title=Intelligent Mindlessness \|date=31 October 2022 \|publisher=alanwatts.org \|access-date=2024-03-12 \|url-status=live \|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231003133609/https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/intelligent-mindlessness/ \|archive-date=2023-10-03}}</ref> 2) "e confuse the world as it is with . . . the world as it is described. . . . And when we are not aware of ourselves except in a symbolic way, we’re not related to ourselves at all. We are like people eating menus instead of dinners."<ref>{{cite web \|url=https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/not-what-should-be-but-what-is/ \|title=Not What Should Be, But What Is \|date=31 October 2022 \|publisher=alanwatts.org \|access-date=2024-03-12 \|url-status=live \|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209014704/https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/not-what-should-be-but-what-is/ \|archive-date=2023-12-09}}</ref>}} The concept is thus quite relevant throughout ] and ] regardless of any connection to ] per se (or absence thereof). Its avatars are thus encountered in ], ], ], ], ], and many other applications.
	Coined by ], '''The map is not the territory''' is a related expression meaning that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one's opinion of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is ''not'' that person; a ]ical representation of a ] is not the concept itself; and so on. A specific abstraction or reaction does not capture ''all'' facets of its source—e.g., the pain in your foot does not convey the internal structure of the stone, you don't know ''everything'' that is going on in the life of a politician, etc.—and thus may limit an individual's understanding and cognitive abilities unless the two are distinguished.

			A frequent coda to "]" is that "all models are wrong (but some are useful)," which emphasizes the proper framing of recognizing '''map–territory differences'''—that is, how and why they are important, what to do about them, and how to live with them properly. The point is not that all maps are useless; rather, the point is simply to maintain ] about the discrepancies: whether or not they are either negligible or significant in each context, how to reduce them (thus ] a map, or any other model, to become a better version of itself), and so on.
	''"The map is not the territory"'' is also an underlying principle used in ], where it is used to signify that individual people in fact do not in general have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but in fact only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up over time, about reality. So it is considered important to be aware that people's beliefs about reality and their awareness of things (the "map") are not reality itself or everything they could be aware of ("the territory"). The originators of NLP have been explicit that they owe this insight to ]. (Main article: ])

			==History==
	__TOC__
			The phrase "A map is not the territory" was first introduced by Alfred Korzybski in his 1931 paper "A Non-Aristotelian System and Its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics," presented at a meeting of the ] in ], and later reprinted in ''Science and Sanity'' (1933).<ref>{{cite book \|last=Korzybski \|first=Alfred \|author-link=Alfred Korzybski \|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WnEVAQAAIAAJ \|title=Science and Sanity. An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics \|publisher=The International Non-Aristotelian Library Pub. Co. \|year=1933 \|pages=747–761}}</ref> Korzybski credits mathematician ] for the related phrase, "the map is not the thing mapped."<ref>Korzybski, Alfred (1933), p. 247.</ref><ref>{{cite book \|last=Bell \|first=Eric Temple \|author-link=Eric Temple Bell \|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VCI5AAAAIAAJ \|title=Numerology \|publisher=] \|year=1933 \|location=] \|page=138}}</ref> In the article, Korzybski states that "A map {{em\|is not}} the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a {{em\|similar structure}} to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."<ref>{{cite book \|last=Korzybski \|first=Alfred \|url=https://archive.org/details/sciencesanityint00korz \|title=Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics \|publisher=International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company \|year=1933 \|page=58}}</ref>

			The concept has been illustrated in various cultural works. Belgian surrealist ] explored the idea in his painting '']'', which depicts a pipe with the caption, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe").<ref>{{cite book \|last=Barry \|first=Ann Marie \|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZiTpRxkTMwUC \|title=Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication \|publisher=SUNY Press \|year=1997 \|page=15}}</ref> ], in '']'' (1893), describes a fictional map with a scale of "a mile to the mile," which proves impractical. ] similarly references a map as large as the territory in his short story "]" (1946). In his 1964 book '']'', philosopher ] argued that all media representations, including electronic media, are abstractions or "extensions" of reality.<ref>{{cite book \|last=McLuhan \|first=Marshall \|title=Understanding Media \|publisher=McGraw-Hill \|year=1964 \|isbn=9780262631594}}</ref>
	==The map/territory relationship==
	], in "Form, Substance and Difference," from '']'' (1972), elucidates the essential impossibility of knowing what the territory is, as any understanding of it is based on some representation:
	:We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum."

			The idea has influenced several modern works, including ]'s '']'' and ]'s novel '']'', the latter of which won the ].<ref>Pirsig, Robert M. ''Lila: An Inquiry into Morals'' (1991), pp. 363–364.</ref><ref>Houellebecq, Michel. ''The Map and the Territory'' (2010).</ref> The concept is also discussed in the work of ] and ], who critiques the confusion of conceptual maps with reality in his book ''Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly''.<ref>Lindsay, James A. (2013). ''Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly'', Fareham: Onus Books.</ref>
	Elsewhere in that same volume, Bateson points out that the usefulness of a map (a representation of reality) is not necessarily a matter of its literal truthfulness, but its having a structure analogous, for the purpose at hand, to the territory. Bateson argues this case at some length in the essay "The Theology of ]".

			==Commentary==
	To paraphrase Bateson's argument, a culture that believes that common colds are transmitted by evil spirits, that those spirits fly out of you when you sneeze, can pass from one person to another when they are inhaled or when both handle the same objects, etc., could have just as effective a "map" for public health as one that substitutes microbes for spirits.
			], in his 1972 work '']'', argued that understanding a territory is inherently limited by the sensory channels used to perceive it. He described the "map" of reality as an imperfect representation:
			{{quote\|We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map... The territory never gets in at all. Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ''ad infinitum''.}}
			Bateson further explored this in "The Cybernetics of 'Self': A Theory of Alcoholism" (1971), arguing that a map's usefulness lies in its structural analogy to the territory, rather than its literal truthfulness. For example, even a cultural belief in colds being caused by spirits can function effectively as a "map" for public health, analogous to germ theory.

			Philosopher ] addresses the theme of accuracy in ''Elements of Justice'' (2006), highlighting how overly detailed models can become impractical, a problem also known as ]. Poet ] summarized this idea: "Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable."
	Another basic quandary is the problem of ].
	In "]", ] describes the tragic uselessness of the perfectly accurate, one-to-one map:
	:In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guild drew a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, coinciding point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography saw the vast Map to be Useless and permitted it to decay and fray under the Sun and winters.
	:In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of the Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; and in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

			The rise of electronic media and ]'s concept of '']'' further complicates the map-territory distinction. In ''Simulacra and Simulation'', Baudrillard argues that in the modern age, simulations precede and even replace reality:
	With this apocryphal quotation of Josiah Royce, Borges describes a further conundrum of when the map is contained within the territory, you are led into ]:
			{{quote\|Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory.}}
	:The inventions of philosophy are no less fantastic than those of art: ], in the first volume of his work '']'' (1899), has formulated the following: 'Let us imagine that a portion of the soil of England has been levelled off perfectly and that on it a cartographer traces a map of England. The job is perfect; there is no detail of the soil of England, no matter how minute, that is not registered on the map; everything has there its correspondence. This map, in such a case, should contain a map of the map, which should contain a map of the map of the map, and so on to infinity.' Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the ''Thousand and One Nights''? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the ''Quixote'' and Hamlet a spectator of ''Hamlet''? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions.

	An alternative reason why we are bothered by the conundrum of infinite regress or the conundrum of maps within maps is that we fail to see that the concept of a "map of a map" is the same thing as the concept of a "map of a map of a map." In both cases, the concept is a metaphor for the faculty of reflection. We fail to distinguish that one's capability of reflecting is an enduring perspective and not simply a fleeting act of examining something. Each time I examine myself examining something (or in turn reflect upon my examination of myself examining my examination) I am exercising the same enduring ability. Husserl referred to this ability as the "transcendental ego," the mind's eye or the capability of a human to reflect and abstract. Standing between two mirrors, you will not be fooled by the infinite regress of the reflection of yourself in a mirror within a mirror within a mirror (ad infinitum) precisely because you are able to see (understand) that you are looking at mirrors facing each other and are not looking at an infinite queue of dopplegangers. Likewise characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators or any other fiction that can be imagined precisely because they are fictions, but the fact that you can reflect upon your ability to examine yourself and your thoughts means you are capable of abstraction and need not suggest that you too are a fictional character in a fictional work.

	] retells the parable in reference to ] in '']'':
	:One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory.

	The development of electronic media blurs the line between map and territory by allowing for the ] of ideas as encoded in electronic signals, as ] argues in '']'':
	:Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory. (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 1)

	=="The Map is not the Territory"==
	]" (1928-9), by René Magritte. The French text on the painting reads, "This is not a pipe."]]
	The Belgian ] artist ] illustrated the concept of "perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves"{{ref\|barry}} in a number of paintings including a famous work entitled '']'', which consists of a drawing of a pipe with the caption, ''Ceci n'est pas une pipe'' ("This is not a pipe"). Korzybski's argument about the map and the theory also influenced the Belgian ] writer of comics ]: for a storyline (ex.: his comic ''Labyrinthe''), a map can never guarantee that one will find the way out, because the accumulation of events can change the way one looks at reality.

	The expression "the map is not the territory" first appeared in print in a paper that ] gave at a meeting of the ] in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1931: {{ref\|korzybski}}

	:
	*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 ], and in ].

	This concept also occurs in the discussion of exoteric and esoteric ]s. Exoteric concepts are concepts which can be fully conveyed using ]s and ] constructs, such as ]. Esoteric concepts are concepts which cannot be fully conveyed except by direct experience. For example, a person who has never tasted an ] 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.

	], in '']'' (]), made a somewhat related point humorously with his description of a fictional map that had "the scale of a ] to the mile." A character notes some practical difficulties with such a map and states that "we now use the ] itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."

	In a sort of counterpoint to ], the ] economist ] (]) 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."

	]'s novel '']'' has a scene in which the students at Enfield Tennis Academy confuse the map with the territory while playing the game ], resulting in a breakdown of the structure of the game, mass confusion, and several injuries.

	== References ==
	*{{note\|korzybski}} Alfred Korzybski first coined the expression in "A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics," a paper presented before the American Mathematical Society at the New Orleans, Louisiana, meeting of the ]. December 28, 1931. Reprinted in ''Science and Sanity'', 1933, pp. 747 - 761.
	*{{note\|barry}}Rene Magritte's surrealism to be to illustrate the point that, "perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves". See for example, p.15-16 by Ann Marie Barry()

	==See also==		==See also==
			{{div col\|colwidth=22em}}
	* ]
	* ]		* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]<!-- Regular–system relation analogous to map–territory: regulator must model system. -->
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
	* ]		* ]
			* ]
	* ]
			* '']''
	* ]
			* ]
	* ]
	* ]		* ]
			* ]
	* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]{{div col end}}

			==Notes==
			{{notelist}}

	== ~~External links~~==		==References==
			{{reflist}}
	*
			*
	* MIT Architecture

			{{DEFAULTSORT:Map-Territory Relation}}
	]
	]		]
	]		]
			]
			]
			]
			]
			]
			]
			]

Latest revision as of 11:04, 2 November 2024

Relationship between an object and a representation of that object

Tissot's indicatrices viewed on a sphere: all are identical circles.

The Behrmann projection with Tissot's indicatricesThe indicatrices demonstrate the difference between the 3D world as seen from space and 2D projections of its surface.

The map–territory relation is the relationship between an object and a representation of that object, as in the relation between a geographical territory and a map of it. Mistaking the map for the territory is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents. Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory" and that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse conceptual models of reality with reality itself. These ideas are crucial to general semantics, a system Korzybski originated.

The relationship has also been expressed in other terms, such as "the model is not the data", "all models are wrong", and Alan Watts's "The menu is not the meal." The concept is thus quite relevant throughout ontology and applied ontology regardless of any connection to general semantics per se (or absence thereof). Its avatars are thus encountered in semantics, statistics, logistics, business administration, semiotics, and many other applications.

A frequent coda to "all models are wrong" is that "all models are wrong (but some are useful)," which emphasizes the proper framing of recognizing map–territory differences—that is, how and why they are important, what to do about them, and how to live with them properly. The point is not that all maps are useless; rather, the point is simply to maintain critical thinking about the discrepancies: whether or not they are either negligible or significant in each context, how to reduce them (thus iterating a map, or any other model, to become a better version of itself), and so on.

History

The phrase "A map is not the territory" was first introduced by Alfred Korzybski in his 1931 paper "A Non-Aristotelian System and Its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics," presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in New Orleans, and later reprinted in Science and Sanity (1933). Korzybski credits mathematician Eric Temple Bell for the related phrase, "the map is not the thing mapped." In the article, Korzybski states that "A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

The concept has been illustrated in various cultural works. Belgian surrealist René Magritte explored the idea in his painting The Treachery of Images, which depicts a pipe with the caption, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). Lewis Carroll, in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), describes a fictional map with a scale of "a mile to the mile," which proves impractical. Jorge Luis Borges similarly references a map as large as the territory in his short story "On Exactitude in Science" (1946). In his 1964 book Understanding Media, philosopher Marshall McLuhan argued that all media representations, including electronic media, are abstractions or "extensions" of reality.

The idea has influenced several modern works, including Robert M. Pirsig's Lila: An Inquiry into Morals and Michel Houellebecq's novel The Map and the Territory, the latter of which won the Prix Goncourt. The concept is also discussed in the work of Robert Anton Wilson and James A. Lindsay, who critiques the confusion of conceptual maps with reality in his book Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly.

Commentary

Gregory Bateson, in his 1972 work Steps to an Ecology of Mind, argued that understanding a territory is inherently limited by the sensory channels used to perceive it. He described the "map" of reality as an imperfect representation:

We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map... The territory never gets in at all. Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum.

Bateson further explored this in "The Cybernetics of 'Self': A Theory of Alcoholism" (1971), arguing that a map's usefulness lies in its structural analogy to the territory, rather than its literal truthfulness. For example, even a cultural belief in colds being caused by spirits can function effectively as a "map" for public health, analogous to germ theory.

Philosopher David Schmidtz addresses the theme of accuracy in Elements of Justice (2006), highlighting how overly detailed models can become impractical, a problem also known as Bonini's paradox. Poet Paul Valéry summarized this idea: "Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable."

The rise of electronic media and Jean Baudrillard's concept of simulacra further complicates the map-territory distinction. In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard argues that in the modern age, simulations precede and even replace reality:

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory.

Notes

Widely attributed to Alan Watts, "The menu is not the meal" may be an unrecorded quote, or it may be a paraphrase derived from two recorded quotes: 1) "Money simply represents wealth in rather the same way that the menu represents the dinner." 2) "e confuse the world as it is with . . . the world as it is described. . . . And when we are not aware of ourselves except in a symbolic way, we’re not related to ourselves at all. We are like people eating menus instead of dinners."

References

"Intelligent Mindlessness". alanwatts.org. 31 October 2022. Archived from the original on 2023-10-03. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
"Not What Should Be, But What Is". alanwatts.org. 31 October 2022. Archived from the original on 2023-12-09. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
Korzybski, Alfred (1933). Science and Sanity. An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. The International Non-Aristotelian Library Pub. Co. pp. 747–761.
Korzybski, Alfred (1933), p. 247.
Bell, Eric Temple (1933). Numerology. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins. p. 138.
Korzybski, Alfred (1933). Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company. p. 58.
Barry, Ann Marie (1997). Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication. SUNY Press. p. 15.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780262631594.
Pirsig, Robert M. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), pp. 363–364.
Houellebecq, Michel. The Map and the Territory (2010).
Lindsay, James A. (2013). Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly, Fareham: Onus Books.

Categories:

Latest revision as of 11:04, 2 November 2024

History

Commentary

See also

Notes

References