Alfred Korzybski

@alfred-korzybski · 2 positions · 0 changes of mind

Polish-American scholar (1879 to 1950) who founded general semantics; author of Science and Sanity (1933), where he wrote that a map is not the territory it represents; founded the Institute of General Semantics in 1938.

Alfred Korzybski did not write this page.

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1. c. 1933

   Our reading

   A map is not the territory it represents, but if it is correct it shares the territory's structure, which is what makes it useful.

   mental models

   Their wordsA map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

   ↗The Map Is Not the Territory (Institute of General Semantics, quoting Korzybski, 1933, and Bateson, 1970)generalsemantics.org 2nd of 3 in this piece

3. c. 1933

   Our reading

   Languages are at best maps: a word is not the object it represents.

   language learning

   Their wordsIf 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

   ↗The Map Is Not the Territory (Institute of General Semantics, quoting Korzybski, 1933, and Bateson, 1970)generalsemantics.org 3rd of 3 in this piece