When Maps Become the World

Rasmus Gr Winther (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

336 Seiten

2020
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-67472-8 (ISBN)

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Map making and, ultimately, map thinking is ubiquitous across literature, cosmology, mathematics, psychology, and genetics. We partition, summarize, organize, and clarify our world via spatialized representations. Our maps and, more generally, our representations seduce and persuade; they build and destroy. They are the ultimate record of empires and of our evolving comprehension of our world.

This book is about the promises and perils of map thinking. Maps are purpose-driven abstractions, discarding detail to highlight only particular features of a territory. By preserving certain features at the expense of others, they can be used to reinforce a privileged position.

When Maps Become the World shows us how the scientific theories, models, and concepts we use to intervene in the world function as maps, and explores the consequences of this, both good and bad. We increasingly understand the world around us in terms of models, to the extent that we often take the models for reality. Winther explains how in time, our historical representations in science, in cartography, and in our stories about ourselves replace individual memories and become dominant social narratives--they become reality, and they can remake the world.

Rasmus Gr nfeldt Winther is a philosopher of science, researcher, writer, educator, diver, and explorer. He is the author of Phylogenetic Inference, Selection Theory, and History of Science: Selected Papers of A.W.F. Edwards with Commentaries.

Preface

1.         Introduction: Why Maps?

A History and Philosophy of Map Thinking The Nature of Map Thinking—Elements of Map Thinking—Deep Mapping—Five Hundred Years of Western Mapping
Maps Today Cartography Meets GIS—A Definition Based on Representation—Characterizations Based on Process and Function
Three Maps Waldseemüller’s Map—Guaman Poma’s Countermap—Van Sant’s Ultimate Map?
Conclusion

Part 1: Philosophy

2.         Theory Is to World as Map Is to Territory

Analogy Three Types of Analogy—Critical Cautions
The Map Analogy A Typology of Map Analogies—Uses of the Map Analogy in Humanistic Inquiry
Assumption Archaeology

Conclusion

3.         From Abstraction to Ontologizing

The Abstraction-Ontologizing Account

Abstraction Abstraction Stage I: Calibration of Units and Coordinates—Abstraction Stage II: Data Collection and Management—Abstraction Stage III: Generalization
OntologizingOntologizing 0: Representation Testing—Ontologizing I: Changing the World—Ontologizing II: Understanding the World—Ontologizing III: Classroom Communication
Conclusion

4.         Long Live Contextual Objectivity!

Pernicious Reification

Contextual Objectivity Conformation—The Essential Indexical
A History of the Mercator Projection I: Gerardus Mercator Mercator’s Critique of Earlier Projections—Mercator’s New Purpose: Navigation—Mercator’s Clear Presentation of Latitude and Longitude—Mercator’s Awareness of Alternative Projections
A History of the Mercator Projection II: Post Mercator

Integration Platforms A Beyond-Mercator Integration Platform: Blocking Pernicious Reification and Seeking Contextual Objectivity—Philosophical Aspects of Integration Platforms
Conclusion

5.         Projecting Maps into Our Worlds

Two Canonical Philosophical Accounts of Representation: Isomorphism and Similarity The Isomorphism Account—The Similarity Account
The Multiple Representations Account Ontologizing—Merely-Seeing-As—Pluralistic Ontologizing—Climate Change and Multiple Representations
Conclusion

Part 2: Science

6.         Mapping Space

Extreme-Scale Maps in Cosmology The Universe’s Baby Portrait—The Universe Growing Up (and Outward)—Cosmic-Scale Maps and the Abstraction-Ontologizing Account
Literal Cartographic Maps in Geology

State-Space Maps in Physics and Physical Chemistry

Analogous Maps in Mathematics

Conclusion

7.         Mapping Ourselves

Migration Maps Arrowized Assumptions—Arrowized Maps—Countermapping Migration
Brain Maps Decompositional Assumptions—Phrenological Maps—The Somatosensory and Motor Homunculi—Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)—Countermapping the Brain
Statistical Causal Maps Linear Model Assumptions—Correlation and Causation—“Genetic” and “Environmental” Diseases—Path Diagrams as Statistical Causal Maps—When Causal Maps Become the World
Conclusion

8.         Mapping Genetics

Building a Mapping-Genetics Integration Platform Assumptions—Terminology—Map Types
The Linear Genetic Map Linear Genetic Maps of Phenotypic Linkage—Linear Genetic Maps of Nucleotides—Assumptions of the Linear Genetic Map
The Gene Expression Map

The Genotype-Phenotype Map

The Literal Cartographic Genetic Map

The Comparative Genetic Map

The Adaptive Landscape Map
An Analogous Genetic Map: The Tree of LifeDarwin’s Hypothesis—Contemporary Phylogenies
Future Extensions: Mapping Genetics as a Paradigmatic Integration Platform

9.         Map Thinking Science and Philosophy

Existence, World Making, and Responsibility

Map Thinking Scientific Methodology

Map Thinking Philosophical Methodology Assumption Archaeology—Tracking Ethics and Power—Imagining “What If . . . ?”
An Invitation to Dream

Appendix: Cognitive Map Exercise
References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	24.12.2019
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie
ISBN-10	0-226-67472-X / 022667472X
ISBN-13	978-0-226-67472-8 / 9780226674728
Zustand	Neuware