Korzybski famously bib⁄remarked that the “map is not the territory”. The concepts that we use to describe the world, i.e. our representations, always leave something behind. The desire to encompass infinitude only leads to absurdities (cf. Borges’ bib⁄Exactitude in Science).
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
Nonetheless, some maps allow for action by preserving some structural similarity to the territory. Concerned with understanding these representations and their biological instantiations, Gregory Bateson centers the concept of difference:
A difference is a very peculiar and obscure concept. It is certainly not a thing or an event. This piece of paper is different from the wood of this lectern. There are many differences between them—of color, texture, shape, etc.
Each element in the world asserts an infinitude of facts which cannot be represented on the map. Reading Kant’s Critique of Judgement, bib⁄Bateson suggests that the “elementary aesthetic act” is selection, selecting differences that can be represented on the map.
Of this infinitude, we select a very limited number, which become information. In fact, what we mean by information—the elementary unit of information—is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy.
Difference, in contrast to identity, is what allows us to create concepts to organize our observations.