When Magritte painted the “La trahison des images” (the treachery of images*) which depicts a pipe and the message “this is not a pipe”; when Korzybski noted that “the map is not the territory“, the insanity of the alternative beautifully articulated by Borges in his one-paragraph short story “Del rigor en la ciencia” (On exactitude in science); they illustrated an obvious truth that is nonetheless often overlooked: the representation of a thing is not the thing itself. The same warning extends to every representation of the world including that rendered to us from our own senses. Anyone who doubts this is invited to ponder whether a particular piece of apparel is black and blue or else gold and white.
Ceci n’est pas une temperature globale
31 Thursday May 2018
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