Corey's Corollaries

Corey Anton's Corollaries

Korzybski (2000) proposed a map–territory analogy to encourage daily exploration of verbal “maps” (words), noting that these maps do not accurately describe what is happening in the “territory” (empirical world): “A map is not the territory it represents” (p. 58). He used a familiar relationship, maps and territories, so that we would remember when the territory (reality) changes, we need to update the map (language). More recently, Corey Anton (n.d.) proposed that we are better served with the premise, “there is no not territory” (p. 11), because the territory (reality) consists of many maps. He argued, “Once we recognize how all maps, as part of the territory, are the means by which one part selectively releases and appropriates another part at different levels of abstraction, we no longer need to postulate that ‘reality’ lies somehow ‘behind’ and/or ‘beyond’ our experiences and/or language” (Anton, p. 11–12).

In his second book, Science and Sanity, published in 1933, Korzybski (2000) proposed his formulations as a non-Aristotelian system that promoted a “complete and conscious elimination of identification” (p. xcvii). For Korzybski, a “non-Aristotelian” orientation meant illuminating the limitations of Aristotle’s “law of identity,” or the “is of identity” (Pula, 2000, p. 21–22). He argued that even though people, places and things have specific characteristics, which Aristotle labeled as identity, these characteristics are constantly changing and are incomplete representations of the empirical world.

For example, I am a professor, but if that is all you say about me then you are leaving out other important roles in my life—friend, wife, counselor, mother, church member, sister, and many more. This illustration provides evidence of Korzybski’s (2000) second premise of general semantics: “No map represents all of ‘its’ presumed territory” (p. xvii). Recognizing that each one of us plays many roles during a lifetime, we begin to understand how one or two language labels are a static representation of a dynamic reality. Anton (n.d.) updated this premise of Korzybski’s as well, “Any map is only part of the territory” (p.11).

In the introduction to the second edition of Science and Sanity, published in 1941, Korzybski further delineated general semantics as “a new extensional discipline which explains and trains us how to use our nervous systems most efficiently” (p. xxxviii). In other words, if nature is constantly changing—and we know it is when we see flowers bloom from barren ground in the spring—then people’s nervous systems detect, or abstract, only a small percentage of these changes. Korzybski (2000) created a diagram of this abstraction process, called the “structural differential” (p. 471), providing a visual reminder of how we leave out many characteristics when we sense objects and events. We leave out even more details when we use language to explain what we sense.

The structural differential visually demonstrates how we omit numerous characteristics of an event, or reality, and continue to use those inaccurate descriptions to make more inferences.  This diagram of the abstraction process depicts Korzybski’s (2000) third premise of general semantics: “Maps are self-reflexive” (p. xvii). In order to account for abstraction levels confusion within, as well as between levels, Anton (n.d.) reworked Korzybski’s third premise: “maps” is the word used to refer to parts of the territory becoming reflexive to other parts at different levels of abstraction (p. 11).  For instance, if I state that “I am angry that I got angry,” then I am making an inference about my behavior, confusing levels of abstraction and leaving out important characteristics about what angered me today. Consequently, the ability to make maps of maps (the self-reflexive nature of maps) when the original map is inaccurate, may confuse how we interpret events and mask what we share that with others. Unfortunately, if my reasons for getting angry today include being passed over for a promotion because I am too old, then important conversations about age discrimination may not take place.

In the 1948 preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity, Korzybski stressed the need to apply general semantics formulations, arguing that “when the methods of general semantics are applied, the results are usually beneficial, whether in law, medicine, business, etc.  . . . If they are not applied, but merely talked about, no results can be expected” (p. xxxi). Consequently, this course encourages action—applying language behavior correctives rooted in Anton’s (n.d.) new corollaries for general semantics premises:

  1. The map is not the territory, and there is no not territory.
  2. A map covers not all the territory, so any map is only part of the territory.
  3. Maps refer to parts of the territory becoming reflexive to other parts at different levels of abstraction. (p.11)