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Map

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World map (1689, Amsterdam)

A map is a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes.

There are no maps to lead us where we are going, to this new world of our own making. As the world looks back to nine decades of war, of strife, of suspicion, let us also look forward—to a new century, and a new millennium, of peace, freedom and prosperity.
~ George H. W. Bush


CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

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Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

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  • The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named.
    • Gregory Bateson (1979) Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E. P. Dutton. p. 30
  • Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
  • There are no maps to lead us where we are going, to this new world of our own making. As the world looks back to nine decades of war, of strife, of suspicion, let us also look forward—to a new century, and a new millennium, of peace, freedom and prosperity.
  • A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a great deal that's communicated about who this person is and what their life experiences have been.
  • We may think of maps and mapping as an objective process, but that would be an illusion. What gets mapped, and more importantly, what does not, is a product of various social, economic, and political phenomena. Quite apart from border disputes and contentious sovereignty, mapping also reflects political priorities. Creating the survey data that can be used in maps is expensive, and large-scale mapping endeavors are typically the preserve of states, whose ability to deliver that data often depends on resources that compete with other governmental priorities. This is true especially in resource-constrained settings.
  • In generalizing lies the difficulty of scientific map-making, for it no longer allows the cartographer to rely merely on objective facts but requires him to interpret them subjectively. To be sure the selection of the subject matter is controlled by considerations regarding its suitability and value, but the manner in which this material is to be rendered graphically depends on personal and subjective feeling. But the latter must not predominate: the dictates of science will prevent any erratic flight of the imagination and impart to the map a fundamentally objective character in spite of all subjective impulses. It is in this respect that maps are distinguished from fine products of art. Generalized maps and, in fact, all abstract maps should, therefore, be products of art clarified by science.
  • We invented a nonexistent Plan, and They not only believed it was real but convinced themselves that They had been part of it for ages, or rather They identified the fragments of their muddled mythology as moments of our Plan, moments joined in a logical, irrefutable web of analogy, semblance, suspicion. But if you invent a plan and others carry it out, it's as if the Plan exists. At that point it does exist. Hereafter, hordes of Diabolicals will swarm through the world in search of the map. We offered a map to people who were trying to overcome a deep private frustration. What frustration? Belbo's first file suggested it to me: There can be no failure if there really is a Plan. Defeated you may be, but never through any fault of your own. To bow to a cosmic will is no shame. You are not a coward; you are a martyr.
  • You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your 'love map,' an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up. And I also think that you gravitate to certain people, actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.
  • The three basic mechanisms of averaging, feedback and division of labor give us a first idea of a how a CMM [Collective Mental Map] can be developed in the most efficient way, that is, how a given number of individuals can achieve a maximum of collective problem-solving competence. A collective mental map is developed basically by superposing a number of individual mental maps. There must be sufficient diversity among these individual maps to cover an as large as possible domain, yet sufficient redundancy so that the overlap between maps is large enough to make the resulting graph fully connected, and so that each preference in the map is the superposition of a number of individual preferences that is large enough to cancel out individual fluctuations. The best way to quickly expand and improve the map and fill in gaps is to use a positive feedback that encourages individuals to use high preference paths discovered by others, yet is not so strong that it discourages the exploration of new paths.

G - L

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  • Now, to use the famous metaphor by Alfred Korzybski in his Science and Sanity (1933), this verbal world ought to stand in relation to the extensional world as a map does to the territory it is supposed to represent. If a child grows to adulthood with a verbal world in his head which corresponds fairly closely to the extensional world that he finds around him in his widening experience, he is in relatively small danger of being shocked or hurt by what he finds, because his verbal world has told him what, more or less, to expect. He is prepared for life. If, however, he grows up with a false map in his head [...] he will constantly be running into trouble, wasting his efforts, and acting like a fool. He will not be adjusted to the world as it is: he may, if the lack of adjustment is serious, end up in a mental hospital. (editor's link)
  • Heinz performs the magic trick of convincing us that the familiar objects of our existence can be seen to be nothing more than tokens for the behaviors of the organism that apparently create stable forms. These stabilities persist, for that organism, as an observing system. This is not to deny an underlying reality that is the source of objects, but rather to emphasize the role of process, and the role of the organism in the production of a living map, a map that is so sensitive that map and territory are conjoined.
  • The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.
    • Alfred Korzybski Science and Sanity (1933) Edition:Institute of General Semantics, 1995, p. 58
  • Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
    • Aldo Leopold "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons" p. 148-149

M - R

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  • 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 (1995/2004) How maps work: representation, visualization, and design. Guilford Press. p. v
  • 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 (1995/2004) How maps work: representation, visualization, and design. Guilford Press. p. v
  • The fact that map is a fuzzy and radial, rather than a precisely defined, category is important because what a viewer interprets a display to be will influence her expectations about the display and how she interacts with it.
    • Alan MacEachren (2004). How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design, The Guilford Press. p. 161
  • Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.
  • Many technologies for mapping and viewing are closely connected to the growth of surveillance in contemporary society and the power of defining who sees and who is seen (Parenti 2003, pp. 3, 9; Dodge & Perkins 2009). The use of surveillance technologies to examine the past does not exclude the present: When satellite imagery is used to search for archaeological sites and their spatial relationships to landforms, images of contemporary settlements and land use are also part of the picture. This intrusion into people’s lives takes place without consent, informed or otherwise.
  • No map contains all the information about the territory it represents. The road map we get at the gasoline station may show all the roads in the state, but it will not as a rule show latitude and longitude. A physical map goes into details about the topography of a country but is indifferent to political boundaries. Furthermore, the scale of the map makes a big difference. The smaller the scale the less features will be shown.
    • Anatol Rapoport Science and the goals of man: a study in semantic orientation. Greenwood Press, 1950/1971. p. 85
  • A fundamental value in the scientific outlook is concern with the best available map of reality. The scientist will always seek a description of events which enables him to predict most by assuming least. He thus already prefers a particular form of behavior. If moralities are systems of preferences, here is at least one point at which science cannot be said to be completely without preferences. Science prefers good maps.
    • Anatol Rapoport Science and the goals of man: a study in semantic orientation. Greenwood Press, 1950/1971. p. 224; Partly cited in: Book review by Harold G. Wren, in Louisiana Law Review, Vol 13, nr 4, May 1953
  • If we then make the obvious assumption that the content of a map is appropriate to its purpose, there yet remains the equally significant evaluation of the visual methods employed to convey that content.
    • Arthur Howard Robinson (1952/1966) The look of maps: an examination of cartographic design University of Wisconsin Press. p. 15
  • Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.
    • Eleanor Roosevelt, remarks at presentation of booklet on human rights, In Your Hands, to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, United Nations, New York, March 27, 1958.

S - Z

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  • As you make your way along life's tumultuous highways, it's important to note that you should always carry a map, have plenty of fuel in the tank, and take frequent rest stops.
  • You can't physically touch software. You can hold a floppy disk or CD-ROM in your hand, but the software itself is a ghost that can be moved from one object to another with little difficulty. In contrast, a road is a solid object that has a definite size and shape. You can touch the the material and walk the route...
    Software is a codification of a huge set of behaviors: if this occurs, then that should happen, and so on. We can visualize individual behaviors, but we have great difficulty visualizing large numbers of sequential and alternative behaviors...
    The same things that make it hard to visualize software make it hard to draw blueprints of that software. A road plan can show the exact location, elevation, and dimensions of any part of the structure. The map corresponds to the structure, but it's not the same as the structure. Software, on the other hand, is just a codification of the behaviors that the programmers and users want to take place. The map is the same as the structure... This means that software can only be described accurately at the level of individual instructions... A map or a blueprint for a piece of software must greatly simplify the representation in order to be comprehensible. But by doing so, it becomes inaccurate and ultimately incorrect. This is an important realization: any architecture, design, or diagram we create for software is essentially inadequate. If we represent every detail, then we're merely duplicating the software in another form, and we're wasting our time and effort.
    • George Stepanek (2005) Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail. p. 10-11
  • Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, observed that elites in a society typically maintain their power not simply by controlling the means of production (ie money), but by dominating the cultural discourse too (ie a society’s intellectual map). And what is most important in relation to that cognitive map is not what is overtly stated and discussed – but what is left unstated, or ignored.
  • Believable fairy-stories must be intensely practical. You must have a map, no matter how rough. Otherwise you wander all over the place. In The Lord of the Rings I never made anyone go farther than he could on a given day
  • In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life.
    • "Foreword" to Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (2000) by Frank Visser
  • What often happens if you study this integral map is that it begins to make room in your psyche, in your being, in your soul, for all the parts of you that were disowned, whether by society, your parents, your peers, whomever. An integral approach even makes room for those who did the disowning to you.

See also

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