The Map Is Not the Territory
Alfred Koryzbski a Polish philosopher, engineer, mathematician, and writer who emigrated to the United States, and died here in 1950, is best known for the idea that the word for a thing is not the thing. Hence the quote, “The map is not the territory.”
His book Science and Sanity is a dense, difficult but thoroughly interesting book that pulls in many disciplines of study. He repeatedly hammers again and again on the notion that a word cannot do the thing justice, and that language shapes and reshapes our world.
He is quoted here because as a person trained in psychology, and having had countless hours of conversation with hundreds of people during my 30 years of work, the quote has become my touchstone. All the words, observations, details, and diagnoses poured over cannot fully explain a human being.