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The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all 'knowledge' is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.

Alfred Korzybski#4

LanguageSemanticsStructureKnowledge

About this quote

What does it mean?
All knowledge is structural; language names relations between things rather than things themselves.
In plain terms
We can only know the structure of the world, not the world directly.
What can you take from it?
Focus on the structure of information rather than absolute facts.

Where it applies

  • research
  • philosophy
  • data analysis

Putting it to work

  • analyze relationships
  • study structures

Questions to consider

  • What can we truly know about the world?
  • Is knowledge just about structure?

Another view

Some argue direct access to reality is possible through experience.

More from Alfred Korzybski

  1. If we consider that all we deal with represents constantly changing sub-microscopic, interrelated processes which are not, and cannot be 'identical with themse…

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  2. The map is not the territory ... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...

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  3. Any organism must be treated as-a-whole; in other words, that an organism is not an algebraic sum, a linear function of its elements, but always more than that…

    Permalink to quote #2

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