The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map... - Alfred Korzybski

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The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...

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About Alfred Korzybski

Alfred Korzybski (3 July 1879 – 1 March 1950) was a Polish engineer, mathematician, and philosopher, most famous for creating the theory of General Semantics.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski

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Additional quotes by Alfred Korzybski

The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.

Let us imagine that the aboriginal-original human specimen was one of two brother apes, A and B; they were alike in every respect; both were animal space-binders; but something strange happened to B; he became the first time-binder, a human. … He had thus a new faculty, he belonged to a new dimension; but, of course, he did not realize it; and because he had this new capacity he was able to analyze his brother "A"; he observed "A is my brother; he is an animal; but he is my brother; therefore, I AM AN ANIMAL." This fatal first conclusion, reached by false analogy, by neglecting a fact, has been the chief source of human woe for half a million years and it still survives. … He [then] said to himself, "If I am an animal there is also in me something higher, a spark of some thing supernatural."

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