Plan for a philosophy discussion: What do/can/can't maps tell us?

Aims:

To identify a variety of maps, their various purposes and applications;

to explore questions of interpretation when using maps (assumptions, agreed understandings, trust, omissions, deceptions [intended or accidental];

to recreate the experience of using maps and to relate to the concerns of users (e.g., explorer/navigator, tourist)

to recognise and value the skills of map-makers and cartographers;

to develop critical skills for using maps.

Resources:

James Bradley Wrack Sydney: Vintage 1997 p. 100 A search for a lost wreck using old Portuguese maps.

Photocopies of ancient maps pp. 54a,b,c,d.

An out-dated map

A fragment of a map

A hand-drawn map not to scale

Cartoon of a car going over a cliff at the tear in the map.

"Certainly Matthew Flinders allowed these discrepancies to convince him to dismiss the claims the Portuguese explored the eastern coast of Australia. But Flinders was a navigator and cartographer, a man who trusted maps with his life. Flinders' attention to detail, his exquisitely accurate charts, his life of duty are all marks of a man who believed what he saw. For Flinders, accuracy was a narrow thing, truth was what he could see, touch, measure, the possible merely the actual. A cold and mean philosophy. But the truth is often more slippery than Flinders would have liked, reality deceptive, the actual merely one of an infinite range of possibilities. And implicit in the process of using one map to discredit another (as Flinders was) is an assumption that one map if 'right', or at least righter than the other. The map that is 'right' is usually the most recent, or the most detailed, or the one produced by the most reliable source.

Yet maps, like any other representation of events of things, are just that: representations. Not reality, merely facsimiles, stitched together with gathered evidence and made whole by our trust in them. For representations can manipulate and distort; lie, disguise, skimp on detail, slant the evidence. Lead us astray. And if one map is suspect, surely all are?

Perhaps the answer is both yes and no. For just as statistics can be reported in different, even contradictory ways, so too can maps be drawn in different ways and still be true...

But on the surface of a globe, where the surface is curved, things are not so simple. A straight line does not and cannot exist and there can be more than the shortest distance between points .... there are an infinite number of lines than can be drawn between the poles, all of which are the same length, and all of which are the shortest distance between these two points..... The question for cartography thus becomes not how are we to represent the facts accurately, but how to distort them the least." Wrack p. 100-1.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION:

What risks do we take in trusting newer maps over old?

We forget the assumption that maps are only representations of reality.

Trusting in maps; misplaced trust in maps. Would you rather trust in a compass or a map?

Consider more usefulness of three dimensional maps of mines under the earth.

Outdated maps: maps useless after bushfires - no landmarks any more.

Sketchy, imperfect, not-to-scale maps: consequences of omissions in maps.

False maps to mislead treasure-seekers.

Recognising the limitations of some maps.

Maps promise us things yet unseen. Power lies in the possession of a map.

Art and mystique of old maps, cartography, navigation.

G. B. Smith 20/9/1997

STATEMENTS to Discuss

1. Brainstorming

mappa Latin for sheet

kinds of maps: geographical. global, local, climate, topographical,

map of Mars, lunar maps, globe, mind-mapping, brain maps.

2. Maps are representations of reality; are reconstructions; subjective projections

analogue of reality; nothing natural in a map

maps combine words and images

maps are works of art; maps interpret reality

Thus "an anthology" of maps

3. Maps have owners and authors and purposes

company maps are kept secret

maps are visual arguments

iconic and linguistic codes;

a science with codes and a special language: latitude, longtitudes, coordinates, projections, keys, scale, triangulation, orientation, relief, contours, morphing, timezones.

"Mercator projections of the British Empire flattered its hegemony."

deliberate focus maps: medieval maps with Jerusalem as the centre of the world.

upside down maps with Australia at the top of the world.

4. Maps convey certainty

give definition, delineation, shape, form, visualisations.

give place names, boundaries; "a fixed grid of named features"

previse a panoramic view of a city; creates cities as unified and organic

Terra Australia Incognita: maps pointed to the unknown

suggest probabilities, possibilities

Do readings from a metaphor yield fact?

Resource Art and Cartography in New Zealand since 1840 New Plymouth, NZ: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery 1989.

Prepared by G. Smith 1997