Concept

Cartography

Overview

Cartography () is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.

The fundamental objectives of traditional cartography are to:

Set the map's agenda and select traits of the object to be mapped. This is the concern of map editing. Traits may be physical, such as roads or land masses, or may be abstract, such as toponyms or political boundaries.

Represent the terrain of the mapped object on flat media. This is the concern of map projections.

Eliminate the mapped object's characteristics that are irrelevant to the map's purpose. This is the concern of generalization.

Reduce the complexity of the characteristics that will be mapped. This is also the concern of generalization.

Orchestrate the elements of the map to best convey its message to its audience. This is the concern of map design.

Modern cartography constitutes many theoretical and practical foundations of geographic information systems (GIS) and geographic information science (GISc).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

Any such select set is called the set of postulates, or premises, from which the reasoning proceeds. The reasoning is nothing else than the exhibition of the whole pattern of general conditions involved in the pattern derived from the selected postulates.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Cartography is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
To "learn geography" is to gain in power to perceive the spatial, the natural, connections of an ordinary act; to "learn history" is essentially to gain in power to recognize its human connections. For what is called geography as a formulated study is simply the body of facts and principles which have been discovered in other men's experience about the natural medium in which we live, and in connection with which…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Cartography is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
This is just the idea given above: to divide space, cuts that are called surfaces are necessary; to divide surfaces, cuts that are called lines are necessary; to divide lines, cuts that are called points are necessary; we can go no further, the point can not be divided, so the point is not a continuum. Then lines which can be divided by cuts which are not continua will be continua of one dimension; surfaces which…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
States what Cartography is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Cartography

Overview

Possible passages

Philosophers who discussed Cartography

Related ideas

Place in the tradition