ABSTRACT
Confusing the map with the territory Polish philosopher and scientist Alfred Korzybski is famed for his dictum “the map is not the territory” (1958), which refers to his observation that many people confuse the representation or abstraction of an object with the object itself. The theory of logical types (Whitehead and Russell 1913) demonstrates how system wholes are qualitatively (logically) different from their parts, and how paradox is generated when logical levels of phenomena are confused. Thus, when people confuse the map with the territory they are making an error in logical typing. In so doing they open the door for paradox (Bateson 2000), as we will see in the chapters that follow. Bateson (ibid.) applies a Kantian twist to Korzybski’s allegory, arguing that it is impossible to truly know what territory, or reality, is:
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.
