The Structural Differential

A better way to view the world.

Introduction

Alfred Korzybski developed the original "Structural Differential" (see diagram) and presented in his book Science and Sanity. It provides a visual construct to depict the development of human thought. Humans have the distinctive ability to abstract to higher and higher levels beyond the object level.

In this edition, I will briefly explain the various levels of mental abstraction. I cannot offer more detail of concepts about which Korzybski took nearly 900 pages to explain.

Drawing adapted from: [By Marino108LFS - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

The original drawing, developed for Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950).

Event

Reality consists of a multitude of processes that our senses cannot experience. The electromagnetic spectrum contains xrays, microwaves, and various levels of color that we cannot "see." We cannot hear dog whistles. We cannot feel the texture on some surfaces.

Object

Abstraction begins at the level of experience. Our senses filter out the processes that have no meaning or use to us. For example, if we "saw" everything in the electromagnetic spectrum, life would consist of a big blur. We would have difficulty maintaining our sanity.

Descriptive

To share our experiences with others, we put names on these objects. First, we call it an apple. Then we assign the name "red" to its "color." Red apples do not occur as events. We have given those names to our experience.

Inference

We derive inferences from conclusions that we reach through a process of reason. We use prior experience to derive premises from which we develop inferences.

We have seen other fruits called red apples that have the same shape and color as the one in front of us, and we infer that this one also is a "red apple."

Generalization

From this simple inference, we develop the generalization that all fruits with this shape and color are red apples.

Etcetera

At the level of etcetera, we know we can continue to abstract. Apples belong to the more abstract category of fruit (which I have already used).

Conclusion

At the risk of over-simplifying Korzybski's thesis, the human ability to abstract has both benefits and risks. Although abstracting allows humans to think about the universe at higher and higher levels of abstraction, it also opens the door to getting lost in our own thoughts. If we don't continually reflect on the object level, we can go insane.