General semantics
Alfred Korzybski
1879 – 1950
The map is not the territory — and, read more usefully, the map is evidence about the mapmaker.
Read alongside: Sense
- Start with
- Science and Sanity (1933)
- Where they resist the book
- The slogan has outlived the system. Little of general semantics survives scrutiny beyond the one line.
Works worth the time
Science and Sanity · 1933
The source of the map and the territory. Long; the argument is available in far shorter secondary accounts.
Read further
- Institute of General Semantics: Alfred Korzybski ↗
Institute of General Semantics
- Wikipedia: Alfred Korzybski ↗
Wikipedia
Where Korzybski appears
III. SenseCritical thinking
The map is evidence about the mapmaker.
When the map no longer fits the terrain, the useful question is not which to trust but what the mismatch reveals — about the assumptions, the incentives, and the reporting line that produced the map. Silent evidence is the discipline here: notice what the data could not have contained.