"a map is not the territory"
Excerpt from Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, 4th edition, by Alfred Korzybski (1958: 58-9).
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Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map, of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by Royce.
If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyse language by linguistic means. This self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multiordinality... [...]
[T]he common, A-system and language which we inherited from our primitive ancestors differ entirely in structure from the well-known and established 1933 structure of the world, ourselves and our nervous systems included. Such antiquated map-language, by necessity, must lead us to semantic disasters, as it imposes and reflects its unnatural structure on the structure of our doctrines and institutions. Obviously, under such linguistic conditions, a science of man was impossible; differing in structure from our nervous system, such language must also disorganize the functioning of the latter and lead us away from sanity. [...]
As words are not the objects which they represent, structure, and structure alone, becomes the only link which connects our verbal processes with the empirical data. To achieve adjustment and sanity and the conditions which follow from them, we must study structural characteristics of this world first, and, then only, build languages of similar structure, instead of habitually ascribing to the world the primitive structure of our language. All our doctrines, institutions, etc. depend on verbal arguments. If these arguments are conducted in a language of wrong and unnatural structure, our doctrines and institutions must reflect that linguistic structure and so become unnatural, and inevitably lead to disasters.
~~
Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map, of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by Royce.
If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyse language by linguistic means. This self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multiordinality... [...]
[T]he common, A-system and language which we inherited from our primitive ancestors differ entirely in structure from the well-known and established 1933 structure of the world, ourselves and our nervous systems included. Such antiquated map-language, by necessity, must lead us to semantic disasters, as it imposes and reflects its unnatural structure on the structure of our doctrines and institutions. Obviously, under such linguistic conditions, a science of man was impossible; differing in structure from our nervous system, such language must also disorganize the functioning of the latter and lead us away from sanity. [...]
As words are not the objects which they represent, structure, and structure alone, becomes the only link which connects our verbal processes with the empirical data. To achieve adjustment and sanity and the conditions which follow from them, we must study structural characteristics of this world first, and, then only, build languages of similar structure, instead of habitually ascribing to the world the primitive structure of our language. All our doctrines, institutions, etc. depend on verbal arguments. If these arguments are conducted in a language of wrong and unnatural structure, our doctrines and institutions must reflect that linguistic structure and so become unnatural, and inevitably lead to disasters.