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Structural Differential

The Structural Differential diagram, created by Korzybski, allows

It thus presents in a visual positive and objective manner, the negative formulations, thus making them usable.

The following diagram is extracted from Science and Sanity (p.398) and is reproduced here with the permission of the IGS.

Event
On this diagram, the event is represented by the parabola E, limited by a broken off line to remind us that it extends indefinitely. Its indefinite number of caracteristics are partially represented by the holes of the parabola E.

Object
The objects are represented by the circles Oh and Oa.
A structural difference between these two objects appears: Oh is connected by threads Ai to the characteristics of the event, whereas Oa is not. This expresses that the animal does not understand, and cannot understand, that his object is an abstraction of the event, because this understanding can only be provided by science. For him, the event does not exist.
The holes of the objects represent its characteristics, in a significant but finished number. Threads Ai going from the event E to the object Oh symbolize the perceived characteristics. The threads Bi represent the unperceived characteristics.
Some holes of the object do not correspond to characteristics of the event, indicating that those are added by our perceptual processes.

Label
The next order of abstraction, represented by rectangle L, starts the verbal levels, the first of a potentially infinite series for man. This first level is descriptive: it names the characteristics of the object. Similarly to the preceding levels, lines Ai connect them. Lines Bi are ignored and holes are added.

Higher level abstractions
The series of successive rectangles, built on this principle, reaches the highest abstractions available, at a given period. These higher abstractions, when they are provided by recent scientific theories, represent as reliably as possible, at a given period, the characteristics of the event. Thus, the last rectangle, Ln, is attached to parabola E.

© ESGS, 2001.