Abstract
In the second half of twentieth century, major tendencies and perspectives arose during the formal and academic development of cartography and mapping. The analysis of theoretical trends in cartography goes back to Arthur Robinson’s Ph.D. Thesis (1955). He was, however, not the first author setting the trend of representational cartography or a representative of modern cartography asserting that maps are objective, value-free representations. Robinson himself refers to Max Eckert whose monumental work Kartenwissenschaft (Map Science, 1921–1925) has to be considerd the manifesto of a new discipline (courtesy written communication by Zsolt Török 2012). To this end, several authors and researchers have labelled these changes in the discipline with different terms: tendencies, trends, shifts, perspectives, approaches, paradigms, paradigm shifts, etc. In our book, we consider the changes to be mainly based upon the Western cartographic literature that show those characteristics that are pointed out in Thomas Kuhn’s writing about the paradigm concept (Kuhn 1970). We take into account that surreptitiously these changes include the epistemological and philosophical bases, visions, and perspectives within applied scientific contexts, methods, and technologies, and their social context.
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Notes
- 1.
Metacartosemiotics is ‘a new concept that implies various changes in the range of theoretical cartography. These changes are both methodical and methodological kind and allow us to outline an evolutionary geo-communicational framework of cartography theory’ (Wolodtschenko 2008, digital text: no pagination).
- 2.
The components of this model are: an information source, message, transmitter, signal, carrier or channel, noise (secondary signal that obscure or confuse the signal carrier), receiver, and destination. This model was adopted in cartography to explain how maps work.
- 3.
A critical politics of cartography is a problematization, a struggle, an ethics and, a technology (Crampton 2010).
- 4.
This statement includes an important epistemological issue which was analysed in the previous chapter.
- 5.
Cartographic Visualisation will still be further detailed later in this section.
- 6.
The Power of Map will be further analysed in the section “Critical Cartography in the Context of Post-Modernism”.
- 7.
Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004), American geographer and cartographer, was a prolific writer and influential philosopher on cartography. Generations of cartographers were influenced by his textbooks The Look of Maps (Robinson 1952), Elements of Cartography (1953) and The Nature of Maps (1976) (some of them with co-authors). According to MacEachren (1995), Robinson initiated a more ‘objective approach to map symbolisation and design based on testing the effectiveness of alternatives’.
- 8.
This statement made by the authors implies that, in Kuhnian terms, analytical cartography proposes a new viewpoint (mathematical model) in comparison to traditional cartography (communication model).
- 9.
Scientific visualisation focuses on the use of computer graphics to create visual images which aid in the understanding of complex, often massive numerical representation of scientific concepts or results. Also scientific visualisation has been defined as a multidisciplinary methodology and its specific goal is to act as a catalyst between scientific computation and scientific insight (Ed Ferguson 1991).
- 10.
Information visualisation is the interdisciplinary study of the visual representation of large-scale collection of non-numerical information, and the use of graphical techniques to help people understand and analyse data. In contrast to scientific visualisation it focuses on abstract data sets that do not have an inherent 2D or 3D geometrical structure.
- 11.
Visual analytics is based on the intuition that highly interactive and dynamic depictions of complex and multivariate databases amplify human capabilities for inference and decision making, as they facilitate cognitive tasks such as pattern recognition, imagination, association, and analytical reasoning (Thomas and Cook 2005).
- 12.
Here Kraak draws on the work of Andrieko et al. (2007).
- 13.
For more detail about types of atlases and research in this field, see Geomatic and Cartographic Research Centre GCRC (2008).
- 14.
For processes of democratisation also see Ormeling (2007, 2010).
- 15.
According to Czech cartographer Anton Kolácný, the creation and utilisation of cartographic products are two components (cartographer’s universe and user’s universe) of an interrelated process in a stimulus–response model (Lechthaler 2010). This incorporates multiple feedback loops and interconnections in the previously simplified map communication model composed by the cartographer, map, and percipient (Crampton 2010). Therefore, this model became more complex with Kolácný’s contribution.
- 16.
For more information regarding analytical cartography and GIS the reader is referred to Moellering (2000), and for the relationships between cartography and geographic information systems see Cassettari et al. (1992) Grelot (1994) as well as Lee (1995).
- 17.
For more details see Cauvin et al. (2010).
- 18.
In German: Bildwissenschaft (Image Science). It has, however, to be mentioned at this point that—in contrast to cartography—in the visualistics or image science proper as well as in semiotics, the concept of models is, surprisingly enough, to the greatest extent dismissed.
- 19.
‘Durch wissenschaftliche Zeichnungen, Graphen, Diagramme, Computerprogramme, Photographien, Röntgenbilder, Kartographien etc. wird wissenschaftliches Wissen überhaupt erst in eine stabile, aussagkräftige und kommunizierbare Form gebracht.’ (emphasis added‚ Dommann and Meier1999: 15).
- 20.
Wikipedia defines immersion in the context of virtual reality as ‘the state of consciousness where an immersant's awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment’.
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Azócar Fernández, P.I., Buchroithner, M.F. (2014). Tendencies in Contemporary Cartography. In: Paradigms in Cartography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38893-4_4
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