ABSTRACT
Usually a map refers in its origin to some real event or real thing, but there are also maps that have no actual territory. For example, “ghost” has no real existence, but the average person upon hearing the word immediately recalls his own map of the word. If asked to verbalize it he would produce a description amazingly similar to that produced by any other randomly selected person. Compared to ghost, some other words have maps of such individual and personal meanings that they can be use to start fights or wars: “sacred,” “eternal verities,” “true God.” By becoming conscious of the wide difference between low-order observations (counting, measuring) and high-order abstractions (“true God”), we can avoid the chaos that results from confusing them.
