Alfred Korzybski once pointed out that “the map is not the territory.” In an important way, maps function as models, or compressed descriptions, by which we refer to elements of the large compilation of sense-data we could call the “territory”. There’s no question that we’ve learned to make better maps of the territory over the years. Nevertheless, for me, there is an increasing sense of wrongness about the way current cartography is popularly viewed. It is as if the once hand-held map with which we were forced to look up so as to not lose track of our place, is now the size of a vast room, covering it wall to wall. Our construction of a map which now has the property of hugeness, before only a feature of the territory, has got us convinced that we’re something great. 

I very much think humans have some measure of greatness; the issue arises when we confuse ourselves with the Source of that greatness. In evaluating the hugeness of our models, there is some sense in which we’ve become estranged from the territory in which we live. Lewis Thomas may have put it best: “It is not a new thing for man to invent an existence that he imagines to be above the rest of life; this has been his most consistent intellectual exertion down the millennia. As illusion, it has never worked out to his satisfaction in the past, any more than it does today. Man is embedded in nature (The Lives of a Cell).”

If only our ancestors in the trees could see us now, debating the very existence of the external world. After “finishing” our current map, we seem to have conveniently forgotten Nature’s role in its making. An innate, unspoken fear of Nature got us most of the way, and now we can’t even come up with a healthy respect for it. But that’s exactly what we need! If the models we make ever contradict Nature, I think the most important lesson our ancestors ever learned, and what we are on the verge of forgetting, is that Nature will win. In other words, our models are most correct if what they posit has some basis in the territory. Only then do those models, and through them ourselves, borrow from the magnificence and order that is latent within Nature.

So, to propitiate this angry World, we must sacrifice our false beliefs about it, becoming unattached to any idea which fails tests of logical (simulative consistency) and empirical (experimental) scrutiny. When we run our models, we should make sure its components hang together well–a loose thread here or there must be snipped or pulled depending on its expected value. We should also make sure that when we compare it to the territory, we are not left clutching the dreams and desires we are wont to put in our models. Let’s leave the island of the lotus-eaters, where we live content, even blissful, with our uninformed beliefs, and instead go in search of more deeply held convictions. 

Armed with a few map-making tools, like logical analysis and empirical inquiry, I’ll try to use this blog to look at fundamental questions. Some things will be original, others will be based on things I’m reading–often it’ll be some combination of the two. Everyone should have their own map of the territory; what you’ll find here are some parts of mine. 

Amanuel Sahilu