The Art and Science of Mapmaking Is Called Cartography

Cartography as an Art and a Science?

Published in Cartographic Journal 32:6. pp. 3-10.

A shorter version of this newspaper is available...

Abstract: Regardless of changing official definitions, many cartographers continue to recollect of cartography in terms of art and science. This paper critiques the utilize of the art/scientific discipline dualism as a means of understanding cartography, particularly by those interested in reexamining the role of aesthetics, design, and visual expression in cartography. Two basic approaches to "art" and "science" in the context of cartography and information graphics are described along with their limitations. I argue that the manner in which the art/scientific discipline dualism has been used in cartography does not stand up nether close scrutiny and that attempts to strictly differentiate art and science have concluded in confusion while simultaneously demeaning both art and science. I propose that various and seemingly divergent trends including postmodern deconstruction, hypermedia, cerebral psychology, semiotics, geographical information systems, and visualization all signal to a process oriented means of understanding cartography. Within this process, "art" and "scientific discipline" serve a functionally like function, informing the different ways in which we come up to know and re-know our human and concrete worlds.

Introduction

Cartography is considered as the science of preparing all types of maps and charts and includes every functioning from original survey to terminal printing of maps (United nations 1949, cited in Freitag 1993).

Cartography is the art, science and technology of making maps, together with their report as scientific documents and works of fine art (I.C.A in Meynen 1973).

Cartography is the subject area dealing with the formulation, production, dissemination and study of maps (I.C.A. in Anonymous 1992).

The four and a one-half decades between the first international definition of cartography adopted by the United nations and the recent definition devised past the International Cartographic Association (I.C.A.) have witnessed a varying part for the oft vaguely defined yet important ideas of "art" and "science" in cartography. Cartography, by definition, was a "science" in 1949, an "art, science, and engineering" in 1973, and is now neither an fine art nor a science. However changing definitions practice not necessarily alter the way cartographers think about cartography. Recent discussions about the nature of cartography take yet to forsake the notion of cartography every bit an fine art or a science or some combination of the two. Keates (1993 p. 201) suggests a path for future inquiry by arguing that "the important relationship between cartographic design and fine art has never received the same degree of attending [every bit that between cartographic blueprint and science]." This involvement in aesthetics, design, and visual expression in cartography - commonly categorized equally its "creative side" - is more broadly reflected in the popularity of Tufte'due south books on data design (1983, 1992). In both of these cases cartography (and data graphics in full general) are understood to take an of import "artistic" component which has been undervalued. There is, so, an of import future role for the complex idea of "art" - however vaguely defined - in cartography, regardless of its omission from the most current I.C.A. definition.

In this newspaper I suggest that despite the vacillating role of "art" and "science" in official definitions of cartography, many cartographers not merely still think in terms of this dualism, but also explicitly want a rekindled focus on the assortment of aesthetic and design problems which are often categorized as "the art of cartography." I seek to examine the history of the art/science dualism in cartography and information graphics in general. Such an examination reveals distinct and of import differences in how the fine art/science dualism is used, differences which still inform and shape thinking about cartography. My goal is to provide a ground from which to critically evaluate the manner cartographers have used the idea of art and science to think virtually maps and cartography, and to elucidate some of the limitations and bug of the art/science dualism. Earlier we can listen the phone call of Keates and others to reconsider the role of what has been defined as 'art' in cartography, we need to articulate how the idea of 'art' and 'scientific discipline' have come up to shape - and in some cases limit - our understanding of cartography.

Art and Science in Current Discussions nearly Cartography

Cartographers have long sought to understand the well-nigh general nature of cartography. Such ways of thinking often include both "art" and "scientific discipline." The persistence of literature about the "art of cartography" implies that the relationship between art and science in cartography is seen as significant (Morris 1982, Woodward 1987, Marcus et al. 1992, Keates 1993). Such means of thinking are important considering they reflect fundamental assumptions about what cartography is and what cartographers practise. We design maps, design courses, teach students, engage in inquiry, evaluate publications, and write about cartography based on such distinctions.

That the art/science dualism even so shapes our thinking about cartography is revealed past a recent word on the Geographic Information Systems electronic mail service discussion group (GIS-L). Thierry Huet asked "does everyone know if cartography is an art?" (Huet 1994). Dozens of replies followed this query. The word highlighted 3 approaches to the question of art and science in cartography: cartography as an art or as a scientific discipline, cartography as some mixture of fine art and scientific discipline, and art and science as inadequate bases for understanding cartography. In well-nigh all the responses, the art/science dualism was uncritically accustomed every bit a means of thinking about and agreement cartography. My goal in relating this discussion is to reveal the different ways that notions of art and science shape the current understanding of cartography.

Sure respondents to Huet's question see the technology of modernistic cartography as destroying the fine art of cartography: "Its a shame that it is often practiced by the artless" noted Ted Samsel (Samsel 1994). Sonny Parafina criticizes the "science" of cartography by arguing that cartography is an art "because it takes skill to present information graphically" ... and ... "this skill or talent cannot be reduced to a gear up of algorithms" (Parafina 1994). Edward Tufte's books on data graphics are then cited as bear witness that cartography is surely an art (Tufte 1983, 1992).

On the other manus, some discussants excised the fine art from cartography. Steve King argues that "cartography is the engineering of making maps," which consists of surveying and drafting (King 1994). Marinus Groenveld argues that

...by and large a map is produced with the purpose of showing people where things are on the surface of the earth or within a geographical location...that is non art. If you produce a pretty map that fulfills that purpose...then yous accept a pretty map...the work that has gone into making the map "pretty" and the resulting artwork on the map I guess could be considered art...just cartography itself is past definition simply map-drawing. If it doesn't fulfill information technology's primary purpose it may exist art simply then information technology is not longer cartography (Groenveld 1994).

However, nearly of the responses to the query about "cartography as an art" regard it as both art and science. Bruce Davis sees the art of cartography in the "need for subjective sentence, particularly in presentation" and the scientific discipline of cartography in its "standards and specific methods of doing some things" (Davis 1994). Steve Tomlinson sees the art of cartography equally the "design and presentation of ... information" and the science of cartography as the "accurate relative representation of the mapped features using surveying/remote sensing techniques" (Tomlinson 1994). Steven Garner argues that at that place is a geographical dimension to the fine art/science dualism in cartography:

Traditionally cartography is both an art and a science. In North America we tend to emphasize the science side while European cartographers emphasize the artistic side of the discipline (i.east. Swiss maps). The argument rages as to which is better (Garner 1994).

Jim Petch responded to all the in a higher place statements, arguing that

There is a trouble with this issue...the issue is ... false. The question is a waste of fourth dimension. The science-art debate is ... sterile. The proper debate is nearly ideas (Petch 1994).

The higher up discussion reveals three basic approaches to the art/science effect in cartography. First are the respondents who understand the art and science of cartography equally distinct and polarized opposites. 2d are the respondents who understand the fine art and science of cartography equally coexisting but serving unlike functions. And third are the respondents who question the viability of the art/scientific discipline dualism as a ways of agreement cartography.

The GIS-L episode reveals that regardless of changing definitions, the result of art and scientific discipline and their relation to cartography still resonates in the minds of cartographers. The issue regularly resurfaces during theoretical discussions nearly cartography and its history, or when the issue of map design is raised, or when the role of creativity and aesthetics in cartography is debated. However, while the discussion begins with cartography as an art and a science, fine art and scientific discipline frequently end up at odds with each other. The perspective of cartography as an fine art is used to criticize attempts to automate map design, or to emphasize the creative, intuitive, and subjective nature of maps which makes them so "magical." The perspective of cartography as a science is used to criticise the subjective and "mapping every bit a craft" view of cartography, or to emphasize and justify the "rational" methodologies which accept immune cartographers to construct increasingly accurate and "objective" representations of the "real earth," or to reveal map design rules which can be used to optimize the utility of maps. Thus it is often the tension between the polarized dualism of art and science which ends upwardly shaping our thinking about cartography and mapping: cartography is an art because information technology is not a science and cartography is a science because it is non an art. Such a negative and round way of thinking virtually cartography is problematic.

In order to empathize such limitations and problems of the art/science dualism, information technology is important to examine the different means the dualism has been and is used. This exam requires a word of the general issue of dualisms and some of their bug, as well as a give-and-take of the particular manner in which the art/science dualism has structured thinking about cartography and information graphics in full general. My intent is to provoke thought nigh the limitations of uncritically using the dualism of art and scientific discipline equally a means of understanding cartography, aimed particularly at those who hope to reexamine the role and function of design and aesthetics in cartography.

Dualisms in Geography and Cartography

The use of dualisms in geography and cartography is common, and our thinking is crowded with them: theory/empirics, objective/subjective, unique/general, global/local, rural/urban, and, of course, art/science. Such dualisms are certainly useful equally a means of thinking and conceptualizing but go problematical when they are used uncritically. Andrew Sayer has discussed the problem of an uncritical dependence on particular dualisms in geography (Sayer 1991). There has been much commentary on the tendency for Western thought to be structured by binary oppositions. Yet

...although binary oppositions such as new/old or north/south are the simplest, most minimal, fashion of registering differentiation, it would exist surprising if everything in the world also conveniently happened to be ii-sided and hence susceptible to assay purely or largely in terms of dualistic conceptual systems (Sayer 1991 p. 285).

The trouble is that "what impresses usa about such thinking may have more to exercise with its simplicity and symmetry than its power to interpret the world" (Sayer 1991 p. 284). Sayer's bespeak is not that dualistic thinking should be avoided, simply that we should apply dualisms - such as art and science - critically, paying shut attending to the fashion in which they structure how we remember, interpret, and empathise the world.

Brian Harley has discussed the dualisms which have structured our understanding of the history of cartography (Harley 1989a). This "discourse of opposites" is based on a series of assumed dualisms such as art/science, inaccurate/accurate, subjective/objective, and manual/machine. Harley argues that the uncritical acceptance of such dualisms is detrimental to a viable history of cartography and that the historical origins of such dualisms should be carefully examined. Uncritical reliance on the uncomplicated dualism of art and science, thus, may be limiting our ability to make sense out of what cartography has been (its history) and what it is becoming. With a sense of the problem of uncritical dualistic thinking in heed, the next several sections examine the manner in which the fine art/science dualism has structured our understanding of maps and other data graphics.1

Art and Scientific discipline in Cartography: Three Approaches

The human relationship between art and scientific discipline has been discussed in numerous contexts including monographs by Alpers (1983) and Hartal (1988), edited collections by Wechsler (1978) and Graubard (1988), and journals such as Leonardo, which is devoted to investigating the relations between the arts and the sciences. The focal point for this written report volition be the literature which addresses the relationship between art and science in cartography and other information graphics.

A review of pertinent literature reveals iii bones approaches to the art/scientific discipline question in cartography and information graphics which approximate the approaches taken by the GIS-L discussants. Beginning, literature which implicitly assumes that such graphics are necessarily the outcome of a "scientific" process and that whatsoever "artistic" value they may have is carve up from the science and of secondary importance. I phone call this the "Polarizing Theme." Second, literature which attempts to evaluate some difference between "fine art" and "science" that may assistance to establish what in a map or graphic can be considered "artistic" and what tin exist considered "scientific." Every bit this inevitably ends up conceptualizing science equally progressive and art as immutable (a-progressive), I call this the "Progressive Theme." The tertiary arroyo, which eschews the art/science dualism, volition be discussed in the final section of this paper. I argue that both the polarizing and progressive approaches to the question of art and science in cartography and information graphics are problematical upon shut examination.

one. The "Polarizing Theme"

In that location are a number of textbooks on the topic of scientific analogy including Zbigniew Jastrzebski's Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Artist (1985). Jastrzebski defines scientific illustration as an "fine art in the service of science," equally visual "supportive material" for scientists, and as a "visual explanation of scientific studies and findings" (p. 5). It is articulate that Jastrzebski considers information graphics to exist products of an objective, scientific procedure. Such graphics are "primarily produced for the scientist and his research, secondarily for the whole scientific customs. [They are] definitely not prepared for the artist himself or the adventitious viewer" (Jastrzebski 1985 p. 5).

A similar view is expressed by Geoffrey Lapage in his Fine art and the Scientist (1961). Lapage defines the "creative qualities" found in graphics used by scientists as "qualities added to a scientific illustration which are also found in works of art and make the scientific illustration valuable for its own sake. They are not essential to the scientific purpose for which the illustration was made" (Lapage 1961 p. 57).

Similar sentiments to those of Jastrzebski and Lapage can be found in the cartographic literature. A paper by Arpad Papp-Vary sums upwards a dominant viewpoint of the polarized nature of art and science in cartography:

The essential purpose of map-making has always been the creation of the most exact reflection of reality or the graphically true representation of space.... To achieve these aims, cartographers in the past fabricated their maps to high artistic standards. To increase the artful effect of their products, the titles and legends were surrounded with artistic figures and the map frame was likewise artistically drawn. The purpose of such artistic piece of work was to help the recognition of reality on the basis of the use of the maps; at the same time, the attractive figures fabricated the map readers interested in the map and its utilize. The basic purpose of the maps, however, was still to reflect reality equally perfectly as was possible given the knowledge of the time. The scientific problems of the exact representation of the real earth have always been the primary and determining cistron in the procedure of map-making, while the artistic work has only been of secondary importance (Papp-Vary 1989 p. 106).

Jastrzebski, Lapage, and Papp-Vary empathise information graphics as necessarily the stop product of a "scientific" process with "creative" and "aesthetic" value being strictly of secondary (if any) importance. Further, the "art" and the "science" in such graphics are singled-out and tin can be easily separated. Science is objective and analytical, a reflection of reality. Art is subjective and intuitive, a reflection of subjective indulgence. Art and scientific discipline are ii different and separable things. Following a similar line of reasoning, the British Cartographic Social club proposed a dual definition of cartography in 1989. The first definition of cartography is for the full general public and "prospective" cartographers "not yet engaged in cartography" and defines cartography equally the "art, science, and technology of making maps." The second definition, intended for practising cartographers, excises the art from cartography, defining information technology equally "the scientific discipline and applied science of analyzing and interpreting geographic relationships, and communicating the results by ways of maps" (Anonymous 1989 p. 4). While this stardom was afterwards abandoned, the fact that information technology was considered illustrates how the "polarizing theme" can shape a general understanding of cartography.

All these views reiterate the polarizing view of art and science found in C.P. Snowfall's pervasive idea of the "Two Cultures:"

...the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly split up into two polar groups...Literary intellectuals at one pole - at the other scientists. ...In our society nosotros have lost even the pretence of a common civilization. Persons educated with the greatest intensity nosotros know can no longer communicate with each other on the airplane of their major intellectual concern (Snow 1964 p. 3-four, lx).

The assumptions almost the polarity of art and science by Jastrzebski, Lapage, Papp-Vary, the British Cartographic Society, and Snow are simplifications which in essence practise non consider the relations betwixt art and scientific discipline. Jastrzebski sees the fine art in scientific illustration but denies information technology a function; indeed in his text he hints at the possible corrupting influence of artistic expression on scientific graphics. Lapage appreciates the art more than Jastrzebski notwithstanding all the same sees the artistic attribute as independent and unnecessary to the scientific purpose of graphics made by or for scientists for their work. Papp-Vary argues, every bit Jastrzebski, that the art in the science of cartography is strictly of secondary importance. The British Cartographic Society formalizes the distinction by suggesting that practising cartographers demand non engage in the "fine art" of cartography. All presume a polarizing model which but skirts the more fundamental nature of their subject field. "Fine art" is easily separated from "science" in an overly simplistic assumption about the dualistic nature of art and science.

2. The "Progressive Theme"

A second and more complex theme in the data graphics and cartography literature assumes that art and science necessarily exist together (albeit distinctly) in maps and information graphics, and seeks to evaluate some departure between "art" and "scientific discipline" that may aid to establish what can be considered "artistic" and what can be considered "scientific." The progressive theme consists of 2 arguments. The starting time concerns the different way that art and science treat their past, and how this tin be used to differentiate the artistic from the scientific aspects of maps and other information graphics. The second statement suggests that fine art and science serve different functions in maps and information graphics.

two.1. Progressive Science and A-Progressive Art

Historian of science Thomas Kuhn articulates the unlike manner in which art and science deal with their past - what Kuhn calls the most obvious difference betwixt art and scientific discipline: "The past products of creative activity are even so vital parts of the artistic scene" while "in science new breakthrough do initiate the removal of suddenly outdated books and journals from their active position in a science library ... unlike art, scientific discipline destroys its past" (Kuhn 1977 p. 345). David Knight links this idea of the progressive nature of science and the a-progressive nature of fine art to information graphics:

While the various (scientific) illustrations from the past proceed to give pleasure, their usefulness tends to diminish with the passage of time because scientific language and the concerns associated with it changes, whether it exist visual or ordinary language. If information technology is the work of a great creative person, it may laissez passer fourth dimension's test and alive on, passing into 'fine art' if it is no longer 'science,' rather than being a casualty of progress (Knight 1985 p. 124).

Such an argument is axiomatic in the cartographic literature and is characterized by a belief in the progression in the "scientific" quality of maps from the "uncomplicated," "poor," and even "pathetic" maps of "archaic" peoples or of our predecessors up to the "accurate" and "objective" maps of today. This is particularly evident in older literature on the maps of "primitive" cultures such equally the American Indian (Burland 1947/48), and of commentary on Medieval Mappaemundi (Beazley 1897). Old maps are interesting primarily considering of their quaint "artistic" nature. Their "science," if in that location is whatsoever, is outdated and not important. Arthur Robinson notes that "[t]he older is a apartment map or a world map, the more than probable it is to be called an art object" (Robinson 1989 p. 94). Information technology is, then, the progressive nature of science which separates science from art. In an oft-repeated quote from his History of Cartography, Leo Bagrow wrote "This book ends where maps ceased to be works of art, the products of individual minds, and where craftsmanship was finally superseded by science and the machine; this came in the second half of the eighteenth century" (Bagrow 1964 p. 22). Bagrow's sentiments are mutual. Ronald Rees, in his discussion of the historical links betwixt cartography and art, writes "until science claimed cartography, mapmaking and landscape painting were kindred activities, ofttimes performed by the same hand" (Rees 1980 p. lx). Bagrow and Rees, while obviously concerned with the "fine art" in cartography, certainly practise art no service by implying that information technology has a static nature, so hands superseded and snuffed out by progressive science.

Robert Root-Bernstein has evaluated the differentiation of fine art from science by the way each treats their by and found it wanting:

...traditions do not change any more apace in scientific discipline than elsewhere. Remaining adherents to laissez passer� theories are not necessarily disbarred from the profession. Science does not automatically reject its past for innovation. On the contrary, science is a selective process that weeds out bad ideas, irreproducible results, and wrong problem solutions to leave fruitful ideas, reproducible results, and useful problem solutions. Scientific discipline...is selective in what it retains of its past, edifice upon that which has been most useful (Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 111).

Indeed, there instead seems to be more than similarity than deviation in the style that art and science care for their past:

I advise that artists turn down earlier traditions of art for the same reason that scientists reject earlier traditions of scientific discipline: the onetime problems are solved; new ones await. Certainly an creative person could choose to paint similar Rembrandt simply every bit a scientist could choose to perform experiments on falling bodies similar to those conducted by Galileo. But painting like Rembrandt tells usa no more nigh perception and solves no new problems of the utilise of lite than Rembrandt already did, just every bit more data on falling bodies reveal zilch new about the nature of motion. To be successful, the artist, like the scientist, must introduce into his discipline new methods, new perceptions, or new phenomena that raise new problems for colleagues to address (Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 111).

A similar argument has been used to critique the mode in which cartography has relied on the assumption that the "art" in old maps is immutable while the science is outdated, superceded past more accurate and objective knowledge. Much of this critique developed in tandem with the reconceptualization of the history of cartography (Blakemore and Harley 1980, Harley and Woodward 1987). Traditional histories of cartography are criticized for their trend to conceptualize the development of cartography every bit progressive and teleological while simultaneously ignoring a complex assortment of cultural, social, economic, and political issues. An culling view of cartography can exist formulated, where cartography is "not a neutral activity divorced from the power relations of whatever human being society, by or present [and] there is no single nor necessarily best fashion in which to represent either the social or concrete worlds" (Edney 1993 p. 54). Edney argues for understanding cartography as "composed of a number of modes" divers equally historically contingent "sets of cultural social, and technological relations which define cartographic practices and which decide the character of cartographic data" (1993 p. 54). These contingent modes are related to the continual emergence of new problems, methods, and phenomena which drive developments in both "art" and "science" as discussed by Root-Bernstein. From this it follows that "In that location is non hard and fast distinction between the 'fine art' and the 'science' of cartography; nor is it that 'cartography is both an art and a science..." (Edney 1993 p. 54). Instead, each "cartographic mode" is the upshot of detail historical (cultural, social, political) circumstances, and the stardom between what is defined as "fine art" and "science" varies from mode to mode. To impose a particular notion of art and science (defined by our detail belatedly 20th century Western cartographic way) on all maps ignores both historical and contemporary differences in the manner in which fine art and science are divers. It is, so, problematic to sustain the statement that science is progressive and art is a-progressive and, thus, to apply such alleged differences to distinguish art from science in data graphics and maps.

two.2. The Differing Role of Art and Science in Information Graphics and Cartography

The second argument of the progressive approach suggests that fine art and scientific discipline serve a different function in maps and information graphics. Kuhn has also argued that there is a major difference between painting and information graphics:

...paintings are end-products of artistic activity. They are the sorts of object which the painter aims to produce, and his reputation is a function of their entreatment. The scientific illustrations, on the other hand, are at all-time past-products of scientific activity (Kuhn 1977 p. 342).

Thus, Kuhn sees a difference between ends - the visual production or language of an artist, and means - the visual product or language of a scientist. Kuhn sees something like in the idea of the aesthetic and how it differs in art and in science:

...in the arts, the aesthetic is itself the goal of the work. In the sciences it is, at best, once more a tool: a criterion of choice between theories which are in other respects comparable, or a guide to the imagination seeking a key to the solution of an intractable technical puzzle. Only if it unlocks the puzzle, just if the scientist's aesthetic turns out to coincide with nature's, does it play a role in the development of science. In the sciences the aesthetic is seldom an terminate in itself and never the primary one (Kuhn 1977 p. 342).

Kuhn does discern similarities in art and science that are important. For example, they both must deal with technical issues which must be solved for the end product to be realized. Kuhn continues:

...the scientist, like the artist, is guided by aesthetic considerations and governed by established modes of perception. Merely an sectional emphasis upon those parallels obscures a vital difference. Whatever the term "aesthetic" may mean, the creative person'due south goal is the production of artful objects; technical puzzles are what he must resolve in order to produce such objects. For the scientist, on the other hand, the solved technical puzzle is the goal, and the aesthetic is a tool for its attainment. Whether in the realm of products or of activities, what are ends for the artist are means for the scientist, and vice versa (Kuhn 1977 p. 343).

Similar sentiments are expressed by cartographers. Keates sees an immutable aesthetic element in mapping, an "fine art" which cannot exist accounted for past progressive "science." The aesthetic and art of cartography is so used to critique what Keates sees as the over-dependence on the "science" of cartography. "I similar to depict attention to the fact that there are realms of homo experience which are not - and never will be - products of scientific discipline; and although few of us can aspire to create them, we can - and should, relish them" (Keates 1984 p. 43). Yet this aesthetic element in cartography is singled-out from science, and it is possible "for a map [to] be 'well designed' in a functional sense without creating anything of the artful property we tin can sense in other things" (Keates 1984 p. 41). Art, in the stop, serves a different part than science and need non be function of the successfully designed map.

Robinson argues along similar lines, noting that at that place are two types of "man-made things responded to aesthetically": the fine arts, which create "not-purposeful art objects" such every bit paintings and sculptures, which are appreciated for their own sake as ends in and of themselves; and the useful arts, which create purposeful objects, such as maps, which are "enjoyed as a means to something else" (Robinson 1989 p. 92). In this case, the map is essentially a useful and purposeful object, employing sure "artistic means" to attain an end which must be "something else," a something else which is, logically, non-artistic; ie., scientific. The cartographer, then, uses creative means to achieve a broader scientific end; the fine art in a map, thus, serves a different function than the scientific discipline in a map.

Robert Root-Bernstein has too evaluated the differentiation of art from science by asserting their different functions. Kuhn argues that the "aesthetic" is the artist's goal and the scientist's tool. Thus, the function of fine art is to produce aesthetic ends which may involve solving "technical puzzles" while the function of science is to produce solutions to "technical puzzles" which may involve aesthetic means. Keates and Robinson place a similar statement in the realm of cartography. Such an assertion of functional difference in turn must logically support the view that at that place is a structural similarity in the products of each endeavor � a scientist's monograph (explaining a solution to some scientific puzzle) is analogous to an artist'southward painting, for example. Both are ends. To this analogy, it seems, Kuhn would agree.

Yet Root-Bernstein finds fault with this formulation of the analogous relationship between art and science. Kuhn'south conventionalities in functional differences found in art and science, as represented by his conception of the differing role of aesthetics, is at odds with the practices of sure scientists. Henri Poincare has argued that

The scientist does not written report nature considering it is useful to do and so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, information technology would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living....I mean the intimate dazzler which comes from the harmonious club of its parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp (quoted in Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 112).

And Alexander von Humboldt:

In the compatible plainly bounded only by a afar horizon, where the lowly heather, the cistus, or waving grasses, deck the soil; on the bounding main shore, where the waves, softly rippling over the beach, leave a rails, green with the weeds of the sea; everywhere, the heed is penetrated by the same sense of the grandeur and vast area of nature, revealing to the soul, by a mysterious inspiration, the being of laws that regulate the forces of the universe (Humboldt 1844 p. 25).

In both cases, art and science seem to serve similar functions. Further, similarities betwixt scientific and artistic action have been commented upon quite ofttimes. The journal Leonardo features articles by "artistic scientists" and "scientific artists." Indeed, the articles in Leonardo oft conclude that attempts to polarize art and science are bound to cease in confusion. Instead, the focus is on goals and ideals and methods shared by artists and scientists: both fine art and science serve like functions. Art historian E.H. Gombrich has noted that

...the task of setting down a pictorial likeness on a flat surface bears a startling resemblance to the method used by scientists in arriving at a theoretical picture of the natural world. In representing the appearance of things, the artist does not simply trace an outline of their visual contours, but prepares instead a hypothetical structure to exist matched and then modified in lite of further feel. Through an alternating sequence of "makings and matchings" the artist gradually eliminates the discrepancies betwixt what is seen and what is drawn. . . . (Such) "makings and matchings" of the artist correspond to the "conjectures and refutations" of the natural scientist (quoted in Miller 1983 p. 222).

There is a instance to be made for functional similarity, and thus structural deviation in art and scientific discipline. Root-Bernstein concludes that "both scientists and artists are engaged in the common pursuit of new ways of perceiving and of controlling nature" and that this mutual pursuit "is mirrored in common methods" (Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 109). Thus, paintings are coordinating, structurally, to experiments, fine art galleries to scientific meetings. Paintings are not, so, an end simply instead are a means, like an experiment. Established theory, in science as well as art, "is only an approximation to perceived reality that permits predictions to exist made about the unknown." Physicists deal with betoken masses and curved space, chemists with energy and atoms � "science, like fine art, has its perceptual conventions � its approximately-but-not-quite-true models of the world" (Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 113). Art and science - yet defined - serve similar functions.

Judith Wechsler has come to a conclusion similar to Root-Bernstein'south. Wechsler argues that fine art and science both strive for "fit" � the "well-nigh appropriate, evocative and contributor expression of reality heretofore unarticulated and unperceived, but strongly sensed and actively probed" (Wechsler 1978 p. ane). Wechsler further argues that aesthetics guide the search for "fit" in both fine art and science:

Viewed every bit a way of knowing, aesthetics in scientific discipline is concerned with the metaphorical and analogical human relationship between reality and concepts, theories and models. The search in science for models that illuminate nature seems to parallel certain crucial processes in art, as Cyril Smith points out: they share a fundamental evocative quality (Wechsler 1978 p. half-dozen).

Relating this dorsum to the subject at hand, it is plausible that the function of "art" and of "science" in data graphics and cartography are more similar than different: both provide a structurally varying ways to perceive, interpret, theorize, make statements about and command nature. They provide different means to the aforementioned end. What "art" does and what "scientific discipline" does is not really that different - information technology is more a matter of how one goes almost the process, and how one goes about any process differs as much within the various "arts" and the diverse "sciences" equally it does betwixt them (Stafford 1994). Art and science are by no means the aforementioned affair; however, their similarities and circuitous interactions are such to foreclose whatever attempt at strict segregation via either the polarizing or progressive approaches. Adhering to the presumed dualism of fine art and science, so, is problematical equally a means of agreement cartography.

The limitations of the art/science dualism as a way of thinking nearly cartography and map design seem peculiarly evident in literature which ponders and critiques the land of cartographic pattern research. Petchenik (1983), Keates (1984, 1993), and Wood (1993) have all written soul searching critiques of the "science" of cartographic pattern, and all found it lacking. Commenting on the era of "scientific" map design enquiry (roughly tardily 1960s and 1970s), Keates states that

Looking back at this period, which lasted for piffling more than than a decade, it is clear that it yielded virtually nothing substantive about cartographic blueprint in the sense of influencing the maps which went on beingness produced. But the attending given to cartographic design was stimulating, and at least the questions raised were interesting. (Keates 1993 p. 200-201).

Such ambivalent critiques are seldom commented upon by practitioners of "scientific" cartographic design, just Dobson (1985) responded to Petchenik'southward (1983) critique of the science of cartographic design. Dobson in essence argues that such critiques are "misguided" and "naive" and non very scientific in their critique of the scientific discipline of cartographic design (pp. 27-28). My reading of this fence suggests that "art" (aesthetics, intuition, creativity) is used to clobber science, and scientific discipline (rationality, reason, belittling, objective) is used to clobber art. Art and science, any they may be, are in a sense both demeaned by such comparisons - they are, as Leo Steinberg argues, "yoked" through metaphoric and analogical negations of each other (Steinberg 1988).

In attempting to single out the artistic or scientific aspects of maps and information graphics based on the simple (polarizing or progressive) art/science dualism, and then, cartographers and other individuals interested in maps and information graphics may be asking the wrong questions. I argue that bold art and science as polarized oppositions to each other is problematical, that bold art to exist a-progressive and science progressive is problematical, and that assuming art and science serve differing functions in the context of information graphics and cartography is problematical. If cartographers are to reconsider the office of aesthetics, design, and creativity in cartography, every bit called for by Keates and others, and then nosotros are going to have to discard the problematic assumptions of the art/scientific discipline dualism, turning instead to inquiries into the different means that what we vaguely define every bit fine art and science together shape maps and cartography within dissimilar contexts and for different purposes.

3. Cartography as Not Fine art and Scientific discipline

Debates over art and science in cartography seem to shed little light on the current dynamic state of cartography in the context of "postmodern" deconstruction, hypermedia, cognitive psychology, semiotics, geographical information systems, and visualization. While seemingly disparate and divergent trends, these developments all point towards an understanding of cartography as a process.

Brian Harley and Denis Forest have "deconstructed" and critiqued many of what they see as the fundamental assumptions underpinning cartography and have reconceptualized cartography every bit an thespian in the process of social and cultural formation and transformation (Harley 1987, Harley 1989b, Wood 1992). Inside this context, the continued apply of the fine art/science dualism by cartographers is understood as a reflection of scient-ism - the misguided construction of a progressive, objective, and de-contextualized history of cartography (Harley 1989a, Edney 1993). Every bit an alternative to such "scientism" Rundstrom has argued for the adoption of a more humane and process-oriented means of understanding cartography:

Process cartography consists of 2 concentric ideas. It situates the map artifact within the mapmaking process, and it places the unabridged mapmaking process within the context of intracultural and intercultural dialogues occurring over a much longer bridge of fourth dimension (Rundstrom 1991 p. 6).

This process-oriented approach to cartography is revealed in studies such as those by Wood and Beck (1989), McCleary (1990), and Pandya (1990). Such a perspective allows cartographers to examine how maps function in dissimilar historical, cultural, social, and political contexts. We can reexamine materials such equally Harrison'south Expect at the World (1944) and Raisz'southward Atlas of Global Geography (1944) not as quaint former maps but as spectacular new ways of seeing and agreement the world given the particular circumstances of the first global war (Hendrikson 1975, Cosgrove 1994). These new ways of seeing depend on a functional synthesis of "art" and "science" - a synthesis which itself questions the need and possibility of separating "fine art" from "science."

In a like vein and from a critical and technological perspective, hypermedia is touted as a means of reconstructing the deconstructed; an everchangable, not-linear, unbounded, decenterable, and hyper-relational procedure for organizing and reorganizing knowledge (Krygier 1994). Remarkably, the nearly fertile work in hypermedia is developing from the convergence of work by literary theorists and computer scientists (Landow 1992). That the ideas and goals of literary "artists" and estimator "scientists" should converge to create one of the more exciting theoretical and technological developments of the tardily 20th century lends support to the inadequacy of the fine art/science dualism.

Developments in cognitive psychology and semiotics are being applied to maps in order to explicate the processes of imbuing visual spatial representation with meaning and of agreement spatial information represented in visual course (MacEachren 1995). Alternative conceptualizations of cartography accept attempted to expand it from the illustration and advice-orientation it adopted in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Many of these approaches have been inspired past the process oriented approaches to cartography, information graphics, and statistics of Jacques Bertin (1981) and John Tukey (1977). Both GIS and geographic visualization at their core are concerned with the process of geographical assay and understanding. Maps have an obvious role to play in this process, particularly equally exploratory methods (Monmonier and MacEachren 1992, MacEachren and Taylor 1994).

Cognitive, semiologic, and geographical analysis components in GIS have all converged in the context of scientific visualization and geographic visualization in geography (Hearnshaw and Unwin 1994). It should not be surprising that, as with hypermedia, the most exciting developments in visualization are driven by the convergence of the functionally similar piece of work of "artists" and "scientists." The "yoking" of fine art and science has been surpassed past the idea of "renaissance teams" in the practice of scientific visualization. Donna Cox has described the procedure of artists and scientists working together on complex scientific visualizations (Cox 1990, 1991). The product of such collaborations (including the ubiquitous NCSA Tempest Cloud Visualization) are not easily describable equally either fine art or scientific discipline. They would not be without the input of both artists and scientists and are something more merely a simplistic mixture of art and science. However defined, art and science serve similar functions in attempting to envision and sympathize complex ideas, theories, and data. There is, then, something "emergent" which arises out of such collaborations. Appropriately, the dualism of art and science - via the polarizing or progressive themes - is non specially useful as a means of understanding the products of such collaborations. Similar approaches can exist found in cartography, where (carto)graphic designers piece of work in tandem with scientists in shaping visualization methods for research and instruction (DiBiase et. al 1994, Krygier et. al 1995). Attention is thus shifted to the process of understanding and cognition construction, the manner in which ideas are shaped and clarified, and the ways in which nosotros come to know and re-know our world. How this occurs, rather than "is it science?" or "is it fine art?" becomes the focus.

Conclusions

I began this paper by noting that official definitions of cartography accept at unlike times included and excluded the idea of cartography equally an art and a science. I bear witness that regardless of current definitions, the idea of art and science - nonetheless vaguely defined - however shape current discussions and thinking about cartography. The reasons for this are ii-fold. The thought of cartography as an fine art and a science has an extensive history and is well established to the degree that it is difficult to non refer to information technology in our general discussions of cartography. Changing the official definition of cartography does not necessarily change the way we recollect almost cartography. All the same it likewise seems that the persistence of the art/science dualism reveals a desire to reconsider the role of aesthetics, design, and visual expression in cartography. Practicing and academic cartographers with an interest in such issues tend to channel their discussions into the art/science dualism, in effect posturing themselves confronting the "science" of cartography which is seen to have dominated the final several decades of cartographic inquiry. While I am sympathetic to the desire to reconsider aesthetics, design, and visual expression in cartography, I am dispute of the utility of using the art/science dualism as a basis for this reconsideration.

I examine two means that cartographers and others have defined the relation between art and science in the context of information graphics and cartography: the "polarizing" and "progressive" themes. I argue that both of these conceptualizations do not stand up nether close scrutiny and that attempts to strictly differentiate art and science based on such conceptualizations are bound to end in defoliation while simultaneously demeaning both art and science. I propose that nosotros consider the consequences of thinking without the problematic art/science dualism.

Trends such as postmodern deconstruction, hypermedia, cerebral psychology, semiotics, geographical information systems, and visualization all bespeak to a process oriented means of understanding cartography. Visual methods such every bit cartography aid in this process of understanding and noesis structure, in shaping and clarifying ideas, and in the dissimilar means in which we come to know and re-know our world. Such a procedure is culturally, historically, socially, and politically contingent and ever evolving, producing new questions, ideas, and issues which continually confront united states of america. I propose that within this process we consider the role of art and science - however defined - to be like, discarding the problematical reliance on the art/science dualism. As an alternative, I suggest that nosotros examine detail instances where "art" and "science" have converged - episodes such equally the global cartographies of the 1940s, the theoretically infused technology of hypermedia, and the renaissance teams of scientific visualization - to guide a reconsideration of the role of aesthetics, blueprint, and visual expression in cartography.

Notes

1. I am using the category "information graphics" to include maps, topographic illustrations, graphs, diagrams, and other scientific illustrations and graphics. I use this generic term primarily to avoid awkward references to the various unlike forms of graphics discussed in the paper.

Acknowledgements: For constructive comments and criticism thank you to Cindy Brewer, David DiBiase, Matthew Edney, David Light-green, Nik Huffman, Alan MacEachren, Annie Newman, David Woodward, and two anonymous reviewers.

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