Martin Cleaver, masterfully.

2.7 Graphical representations

Graphical representations, and in particular, maps, are a rich topic for cognitive research:

Each person carries with him his cognitive field as a map of the world. He responds not to the world, but to the map. When he receives the stimulus of a communication, the meaning it has is the way it can be fitted into the map. When the communication fits readily, one’s confidence in his map is increased. … Since the effects of a communication depend on the manner in which it “meshes” with an existing cognitive map, we might readily entertain the notion that these efforts will take more readily when the cognitive maps of the communicators are similar in structure. [NOM]

[Korzybski], the founder of the field of “general semantics ” is renowned for having written:

Any map or language, to be of maximum usefulness, should, in structure, be similar to the structure of the empirical world… The map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

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