As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.
Alfred KorzybskiThe map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.
Alfred KorzybskiI want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Alfred Korzybski