That short story by Borges (“On Exactitude in Science” reproduced in the previous entry) is absurd, of course, because it attempts a major shift in our expectations for certainty. Playing upon our phrase, “The Map is Not the Territory,” the little kingdom resists by creating a map on a 1:1 scale. In other words, the representation of knowledge becomes equivalent to the reality of knowledge: literally (truly literally) everything in the world is fully represented on the map. (I hear an objection; be patient!) Only in this way, the kingdom must reason, can we know everything that is out there. 

​Of course, the map is completely impractical, “Useless.” Still, as itself a metaphor for the problem of knowing, the ‘map’ has dug in its heels a bit. Borges wasn’t the first to use it, nor even in that way. Lewis Carroll, he of the Snark Hunt, did too:

“What a useful thing a pocket-map is!” I remarked.

“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”

“About six inches to the mile.”

“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!”

“Have you used it much?” I enquired.

“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight ! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”

 

- Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, 1893

If we could only utter reality directly! Professor of Semiotics (a field which is essentially about this very question) Umberto Eco, in his essay “On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1” (1983) attempted this very feat, as have artists like Sara Morawetz:

The spoken words are Umberto Eco’s essay “On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1”

Getting to the Point

So the absurdity is clear. What we tend to do instead is create many simpler maps of the same territory, basing each upon whatever data we might need most: one map for topography, another for driving navigation, another for the locations of toxic waste dumps (that we know of)–each is tailored for a specific kind of knowing most important to us at the time of inquiry. We simplify the communication of knowledge for the full reality. Rather than becoming overwhelmed by so much data which is not relevant at the time (“All I need to know is if that low pressure system might create a tornado; stop telling me about the number of grandmothers per hectare!”). We call this “getting to the point.”

The “point” is incomplete, a simplified shorthand of knowledge, a paring down of all the data. If we can see (to be generous) 1% of the total picture clearly in our studies (leaving ourselves 99% blind to the rest), our almost complete blindness in delivering conclusions is seen as strategic and astute. After all, the number of grandmothers isn’t relevant to tornado formation; neither are Amazon warehouses; or the number of CO2-producing industries in the valley ahead of the storm front that pre-heat the ground air. . . . if they’re not in the meteorological model, they’re extraneous. 

“The school composition assignment is too often the “certain result” masquerading as “certain knowledge.” And by rewarding/grading this blinded compliance, we spread an often delusional concept of confidence and pleasure.”

The Map of Language

But all of this is absurd, too, because clearly “all knowledge” is not a “map” at all. If we want to capture reality, we are left to discover the best methodology for doing so. A map is one simple medium, but so far, I’ve been using it as a metaphor for the problem itself. Most commonly, we use language for the communication of knowledge so it is the careful use of language that might better work to represent what we know.

Yes, language fails us regularly.  All the more reason to use it carefully, say the scholars! Enough of this playing with metaphor and abstraction! What we need are a battery of tools designed to regulate the use of language: dictionaries, grammar manuals, spellcheck, essay forms, and school teachers who drill the method of composition into the too-flexible minds of youth. 

In brief, while we may not capture “all of knowledge” with each utterance, we might at least say what we mean. Speak the reality we intend. Communicate precisely the data readers want. Get to the point. And this–if we are not taking 10 minutes of time off on a “free Friday” afternoon of poetry writing and fingerpainting–is a fair description of school composition instruction. 

What We Need is a New Metaphor  Method

I will not conduct my semi-annual tirade against the five paragraph essay here. However, a review of the grading rubrics for student writing even today finds a heavy reliance on “objective criteria” such as prescribed forms that will help students in the “real world,” “accurate” diction, focused purpose statements, mechanical excellence, and the like.  In schools, we write according to the dictum of the conduit metaphor, a kind of “word tube” where ideas are completely and accurately transferred along an insulated cylinder from mouth to ear (or ink to eye), without the risk of “misinterpretation.”

School composition, however, is the map metaphor made smaller. It says, “Don’t worry about the world of meaning-making or the fuzzy phenomenology of experience or the systemic relationships which are more than just cause-effect: for now, let’s make this essay, this one small transmission of idea, a 1:1 correspondence.” And, to teach it, we teachers have employed dozens of metaphors along the way to show we mean business. The forms we teach, though limited to this sophomore exercise, are simultaneously “real world.” We equate style choices to “accuracy” as if they were, for instance, arithmetic or target shooting. We create a notion of mental “focus,” limiting the mind to that 1% of the total picture (blind to the 99%), and we suggest that the work of representation is, in the end, merely a “mechanical” exercise. We follow-through with these metaphors by ourselves evaluating the subjective work of meaning-making with numerical scores. And then we wonder why young people are turned off to writing (and reading).

The school composition assignment is too often the “certain result” masquerading as “certain knowledge.” And by rewarding/grading this blinded compliance, we spread an often delusional concept of confidence and pleasure.

I Can’t Even Talk About This Now?

By blinding ourselves to the metaphors implicit and inherent in language, and by calling on our students to do the same, even indirectly, we become the foolish map-makers of Carroll, Borges, Eco, and others. Language, our primary vehicle for communication knowledge, is merely a representational map, always a simplificationHere, Waywords most often uses this term as a form of false ... More, a reduction, a metaphor, a symbol for idea, a space for (re-)interpretation, an instrument for acquisition and revision, and a powerful tool for shifting ideologies. 

Is the “Map is Not the Territory” an inaccurate claim to understanding epistemologyAny question of philosophy which addresses what we can know ... More? Yes. For there is no entirely accurate one. It is a metaphor, just as the nature of language is, a signifier for something signified. Are there other metaphors we could use? Yes. Are there other methods we might use to better work with the problems described here? Also, . . . perhaps (we might consider the role of meta-rationality, for one). But the world is often nebulous and dynamic, after all. It sounds like we’re back to that uncertainty notion again, but now even language itself cannot accurately capture the argument.