The Map is Not the Territory

Crashing an MA Arts and Ecology Workshop led by Bruce Gilchrist from London Fieldworks

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY
extracts from the notes Bruce gave us....

The map is not the territory encapsulates the view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone. A specific abstraction or reaction does not capture all facets of its source—e.g., the pain in your foot does not convey the internal structure of the stone etc.

Korzybski's dictum ("The map is not the territory") is used to signify that individual people in fact do not in general have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but in fact only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up over time, about reality. So it is considered important to be aware that people's beliefs about reality and their awareness of things (the "map") are not reality itself or everything they could be aware of ("the territory").

The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless at the same time. Lewis Carroll, in Sylvie and Bruno (1889), made the point humorously with his description of a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." A character notes some practical difficulties with such a map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."

MEMORY AND LANDSCAPE: nature and its representations
What is the relationship between memory and landscape? How do landscapes exercise an influence on us? What are the limits
of landscape when the word now applies to urban landscapes, media landscapes, political landscapes, and more?