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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.
Tissot's indicatrices viewed on a sphere: all are identical circles.
The Behrmann projection with Tissot's indicatrices
The indicatrices demonstrate the difference between the 3D world as seen from space and 2D projections of its surface.
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."[a] 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.
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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).[3] Korzybski credits mathematician Eric Temple Bell for the related phrase, "the map is not the thing mapped."[4][5] 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."[6]
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").[7] 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.[8]
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.[9][10] 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.[11]
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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.
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- All models are wrong
- Allegory of the cave
- Blind men and an elephant
- Direct and indirect realism
- Emic and etic
- Fallacy of misplaced concreteness
- Good regulator
- Knowledge argument
- Ludic fallacy
- Mental model
- Mind projection fallacy
- Nominalism
- Non-Aristotelian logic
- On the Content and Object of Presentations
- Philosophy of perception
- Reification (fallacy)
- Signified and signifier
- Social constructionism
- Structural differential
- Surrogation
- Symbolism (disambiguation)
- Unintended consequences
- Use–mention distinction
- When a white horse is not a horse
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- 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."[1] 2) "[W]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."[2]
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