The Map Is Not the Territory

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A comment on the relationship between reality and representation (the “map-territory relation”) (Wikipedia).

Consider Bonini's paradox: "As a model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable. Alternatively, as a model grows more realistic, it also becomes just as difficult to understand as the real-world processes it represents"

cf George Box's aphorism: "All models are wrong, but some are useful."

Borges wrote on the idea of a one-to-one scale map (expanding on Carroll): "In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guild drew a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, coinciding point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography saw the vast Map to be Useless and permitted it to decay and fray under the Sun and winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of the Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; and in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography."

Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe is a comment on this same idea.