“Maps have been a successful form of representation for centuries by making the world understandable through systematic abstraction that retains the iconicity of space depicting space. Advances in methods and technologies are blurring the lines among maps and other forms of visual representation and pushing the bounds of “map” as a concept toward both more realistic and more abstract depiction. As a result, there are a variety of unanswered questions about the attributes and implications of “maps.””

—  Alan MacEachren

Source: Research challenges in geovisualization (2001), p. 6-7

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Maps have been a successful form of representation for centuries by making the world understandable through systematic …" by Alan MacEachren?
Alan MacEachren photo
Alan MacEachren23
American geographer 1952

Related quotes

“The representational nature of maps, however, is often ignored – what we see when looking at a map is not the word, but an abstract representation that we find convenient to use in place of the world. When we build these abstract representations we are not revealing knowledge as much as are creating it.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

(2004), p. v
How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995)

“Understanding how maps work and why maps work (or do not work) as representations in their own right and as prompts to further representations, and what it means for a map to work, are critical issues as we embark on a visual information age.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

(2004), p. v
How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995)

Michael Friendly photo

“It is common to think of statistical graphics and data visualization as relatively modern developments in statistics. In fact, the graphic representation of quantitative information has deep roots. These roots reach into the histories of the earliest map-making and visual depiction, and later into thematic cartography, statistics and statistical graphics, medicine, and other fields. Along the way, developments in technologies (printing, reproduction) mathematical theory and practice, and empirical observation and recording, enabled the wider use of graphics and new advances in form and content.”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. " A brief history of data visualization http://www.datavis.ca/papers/hbook.pdf at datavis.ca, March 21, 2006.

“To make maps that work, we must depict categories using methods that match the structures of human mental categorization.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 152. As cited in: V.P. Filippakopoulou et al. (2002)

Jeff VanderMeer photo

“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

“Cartography is about representation. This statement may seem obvious, but it has been overlooked in our search for organizing principles for the field. Rather than restricting research in cartography to maps that present well-defined messages (and suggesting a single, map-engineering approach to improving the transmission of these messages, as the communication approach did), attention to maps as spatial representation expands the field.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 1

Rebecca Solnit photo

“A labyrinth is a symbolic journey… but it is a map we can really walk on, blurring the difference between map and world.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Daniel Levitin photo

“Music combines the temporal aspects of film and dance with the spatial aspects of painting and sculpture, where pitch space (or frequency space) takes the place of three-dimensional physical space… frequency maps in the auditory cortex… function much the way that spatial maps do in the visual cortex.”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Richard Long photo

“A sculpture, a map, a photograph; all the forms of my work are equal and complementary. The knowledge of my actions, in whatever form, is the art. My art is the essence of my experience, not a representation of it.”

Richard Long (1945) artist

Richard Long: Books, Prints, Printed Matter. Exhib cat New York Public Library, New York 1994
1990s

“But because of the way in which depictions represent, there is a correspondence between parts and spatial relations of the representation and those of the object; this structural mapping, which confers a type of resemblance, underlies the way images convey specific content. In this respect images are like pictures. Unlike words and symbols, depictions are not arbitrarily paired with what they represent.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Stephen M. Kosslyn, ‎William L. Thompson, ‎Giorgio Ganis (2006), The Case for Mental Imagery. p. 44; Cited in: Michael R. W. Dawson (2013). Mind, Body, World: Foundations of Cognitive Science. p. 108

Related topics