When Maps Become the World

When Maps Become the World PDF Author: Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226669670
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

When Maps Become the World

When Maps Become the World PDF Author: Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022667486X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
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.

When Maps Become the World

When Maps Become the World PDF Author: Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226669670
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Maps

Maps PDF Author: James R. Akerman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cartography
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Introducing readers to a wide range of maps from different time periods and a variety of cultures, this book confirms the vital roles of maps throughout history in commerce, art, literature, and national identity.

Time in Maps

Time in Maps PDF Author: Kären Wigen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022671862X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Maps organize us in space, but they also organize us in time. Looking around the world for the last five hundred years, Time in Maps shows that today’s digital maps are only the latest effort to insert a sense of time into the spatial medium of maps. Historians Kären Wigen and Caroline Winterer have assembled leading scholars to consider how maps from all over the world have depicted time in ingenious and provocative ways. Focusing on maps created in Spanish America, Europe, the United States, and Asia, these essays take us from the Aztecs documenting the founding of Tenochtitlan, to early modern Japanese reconstructing nostalgic landscapes before Western encroachments, to nineteenth-century Americans grappling with the new concept of deep time. The book also features a defense of traditional paper maps by digital mapmaker William Rankin. With more than one hundred color maps and illustrations, Time in Maps will draw the attention of anyone interested in cartographic history.

A History of the World in 12 Maps

A History of the World in 12 Maps PDF Author: Jerry Brotton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143126024
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 547

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Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller “Maps allow the armchair traveler to roam the world, the diplomat to argue his points, the ruler to administer his country, the warrior to plan his campaigns and the propagandist to boost his cause… rich and beautiful.” – Wall Street Journal Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely scientific objects, maps of the world are unavoidably ideological and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power and authority of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age. In this scintillating book, Jerry Brotton examines the significance of 12 maps - from the almost mystical representations of ancient history to the satellite-derived imagery of today. He vividly recreates the environments and circumstances in which each of the maps was made, showing how each conveys a highly individual view of the world. Brotton shows how each of his maps both influenced and reflected contemporary events and how, by considering it in all its nuances and omissions, we can better understand the world that produced it. Although the way we map our surroundings is more precise than ever before, Brotton argues that maps today are no more definitive or objective than they have ever been. Readers of this beautifully illustrated and masterfully argued book will never look at a map in quite the same way again. “A fascinating and panoramic new history of the cartographer’s art.” – The Guardian “The intellectual background to these images is conveyed with beguiling erudition…. There is nothing more subversive than a map.” – The Spectator “A mesmerizing and beautifully illustrated book.” —The Telegraph

A People's Atlas of Detroit

A People's Atlas of Detroit PDF Author: Andrew Newman
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814342981
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Critical, wide-ranging analyses of Detroit’s redevelopment and alternative visions for its future.

The Power of Maps

The Power of Maps PDF Author: Denis Wood
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9780898624939
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This volume ventures into terrain where even the most sophisticated map fails to lead--through the mapmaker's bias. Denis Wood shows how maps are not impartial reference objects, but rather instruments of communication, persuasion, and power. Like paintings, they express a point of view. By connecting us to a reality that could not exist in the absence of maps--a world of property lines and voting rights, taxation districts and enterprise zones--they embody and project the interests of their creators. Sampling the scope of maps available today, illustrations include Peter Gould's AIDS map, Tom Van Sant's map of the earth, U.S. Geological Survey maps, and a child's drawing of the world. THE POWER OF MAPS was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design.

The Natures of Maps

The Natures of Maps PDF Author: Denis Wood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cartography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The authors demonstrate that maps of the natural, physical world are just as culturally and socially constructed as any map of property or territory.

Map: Assembling the World in An Image

Map: Assembling the World in An Image PDF Author: Phaidon Editors
Publisher: Phaidon Press
ISBN: 9780714869445
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
300 stunning maps from all periods and from all around the world, exploring and revealing what maps tell us about history and ourselves. Selected by an international panel of cartographers, academics, map dealers and collectors, the maps represent over 5,000 years of cartographic innovation drawing on a range of cultures and traditions. Comprehensive in scope, this book features all types of map from navigation and surveys to astronomical maps, satellite and digital maps, as well as works of art inspired by cartography. Unique curated sequence presents maps in thought-provoking juxtapositions for lively, stimulating reading. Features some of the most influential mapmakers and institutions in history, including Gerardus Mercator, Abraham Ortelius, Phyllis Pearson, Heinrich Berann, Bill Rankin, Ordnance Survey and Google Earth. Easy-to-use format, with large reproductions, authoritative texts and key caption information, it is the perfect introduction to the subject. Also features a comprehensive illustrated timeline of the history of cartography, biographies of leading cartographers and a glossary of cartographic terms.

History of the World in Maps

History of the World in Maps PDF Author: Times Atlases
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 9780008147792
Category : Historical geography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
From Babylonian tablets to Google Maps, the world has evolved rapidly, along with the ways in which we see it. In this time, cartography has not only kept pace with these changes, but has often driven them. In this beautiful book, over 70 maps give a visual representation of the history of the world.