"Logocentrism" is a term coined by the German philosopher Ludwig Klages in the 1920s. It refers to the tradition of "Western" science and philosophy that situates the logos, "the word" or the "act of speech", as epistemologically superior in a system, or structure, in which we may only know, or be present in, the world by way of a logocentric metaphysics. For this structure to hold true it must be assumed that there is an original, irreducible object which the logos represents, and therefore, that our presence in the world is necessarily mediated. If there is a Platonic Ideal Form then there must be an ideal representation of such a form. According to logocentrism, this ideal representation is the logos.