The Science and Art of Designing Maps Is Called

Cartography equally an Art and a Science?

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

A shorter version of this paper is available...

ABSTRACT: Regardless of changing official definitions, many cartographers continue to call back of cartography in terms of art and science. This newspaper critiques the utilize of the fine art/science dualism as a means of understanding cartography, particularly past those interested in reexamining the part of aesthetics, design, and visual expression in cartography. 2 basic approaches to "art" and "science" in the context of cartography and data graphics are described forth with their limitations. I argue that the mode in which the art/science dualism has been used in cartography does non stand up upwards under shut scrutiny and that attempts to strictly differentiate art and science have concluded in confusion while simultaneously demeaning both art and science. I suggest that various and seemingly divergent trends including postmodern deconstruction, hypermedia, cerebral psychology, semiotics, geographical information systems, and visualization all point to a process oriented means of agreement cartography. Inside this process, "art" and "scientific discipline" serve a functionally similar office, informing the different ways in which we come up to know and re-know our human and physical worlds.

Introduction

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

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

Cartography is the discipline dealing with the conception, production, dissemination and written report of maps (I.C.A. in Anonymous 1992).

The four and a half decades between the first international definition of cartography adopted by the United Nations and the contempo definition devised by the International Cartographic Association (I.C.A.) have witnessed a varying office for the often vaguely defined still important ideas of "fine art" and "science" in cartography. Cartography, by definition, was a "science" in 1949, an "art, science, and technology" in 1973, and is now neither an art nor a science. Yet changing definitions do not necessarily change the style cartographers think about cartography. Recent discussions well-nigh the nature of cartography have withal to forsake the notion of cartography as an art or a scientific discipline or some combination of the 2. Keates (1993 p. 201) suggests a path for time to come inquiry by arguing that "the important human relationship between cartographic design and art has never received the same degree of attention [as that betwixt cartographic design and scientific discipline]." This interest in aesthetics, design, and visual expression in cartography - commonly categorized as its "creative side" - is more broadly reflected in the popularity of Tufte's books on information pattern (1983, 1992). In both of these cases cartography (and information graphics in general) are understood to have an of import "artistic" component which has been undervalued. At that place is, and so, an important hereafter role for the circuitous idea of "art" - nonetheless vaguely defined - in cartography, regardless of its omission from the well-nigh current I.C.A. definition.

In this paper I suggest that despite the vacillating office of "fine art" and "science" in official definitions of cartography, many cartographers non merely notwithstanding think in terms of this dualism, but also explicitly desire a rekindled focus on the assortment of artful and design issues which are ofttimes 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 important differences in how the art/science dualism is used, differences which however inform and shape thinking about cartography. My goal is to provide a footing from which to critically evaluate the way cartographers accept used the idea of fine art and science to think about maps and cartography, and to elucidate some of the limitations and problems of the fine art/science dualism. Before we can heed the call of Keates and others to reconsider the function of what has been defined as 'art' in cartography, we need to articulate how the idea of 'art' and 'science' take come to shape - and in some cases limit - our agreement of cartography.

Fine art and Science in Current Discussions about Cartography

Cartographers have long sought to understand the most full 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 scientific discipline in cartography is seen as significant (Morris 1982, Woodward 1987, Marcus et al. 1992, Keates 1993). Such means of thinking are of import because they reflect central assumptions nigh what cartography is and what cartographers do. Nosotros design maps, design courses, teach students, engage in research, evaluate publications, and write nigh cartography based on such distinctions.

That the art/scientific discipline dualism still shapes our thinking about cartography is revealed by a recent word on the Geographic Data Systems electronic mail discussion grouping (GIS-L). Thierry Huet asked "does anybody know if cartography is an art?" (Huet 1994). Dozens of replies followed this query. The word highlighted three approaches to the question of fine art and scientific discipline in cartography: cartography equally an art or every bit a science, cartography every bit some mixture of art and science, and fine art and scientific discipline as inadequate bases for understanding cartography. In almost all the responses, the art/science dualism was uncritically accepted equally a means of thinking near and understanding cartography. My goal in relating this discussion is to reveal the different means that notions of art and scientific discipline shape the electric current agreement of cartography.

Certain respondents to Huet's question encounter the technology of modern cartography as destroying the fine art of cartography: "Its a shame that it is often practiced past the artless" noted Ted Samsel (Samsel 1994). Sonny Parafina criticizes the "scientific discipline" of cartography by arguing that cartography is an fine art "considering it takes skill to present data graphically" ... and ... "this skill or talent cannot be reduced to a set of algorithms" (Parafina 1994). Edward Tufte's books on data graphics are then cited as evidence that cartography is surely an art (Tufte 1983, 1992).

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

...more often than not a map is produced with the purpose of showing people where things are on the surface of the globe or inside 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...but cartography itself is by definition simply map-drawing. If information technology doesn't fulfill it's primary purpose information technology may be art simply then it is not longer cartography (Groenveld 1994).

Nonetheless, nigh of the responses to the query near "cartography as an fine art" regard it every bit both art and scientific discipline. Bruce Davis sees the art of cartography in the "need for subjective judgement, specially in presentation" and the science of cartography in its "standards and specific methods of doing some things" (Davis 1994). Steve Tomlinson sees the art of cartography every bit the "design and presentation of ... data" 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 art/science dualism in cartography:

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

Jim Petch responded to all the above statements, arguing that

There is a trouble with this issue...the outcome is ... imitation. The question is a waste material of fourth dimension. The science-fine art debate is ... sterile. The proper argue is about ideas (Petch 1994).

The above give-and-take reveals three basic approaches to the art/science upshot in cartography. First are the respondents who empathise the fine art and science of cartography as distinct and polarized opposites. Second are the respondents who understand the fine art and science of cartography as coexisting merely serving unlike functions. And third are the respondents who question the viability of the art/science dualism as a ways of understanding cartography.

The GIS-L episode reveals that regardless of irresolute definitions, the issue of fine art and science and their relation to cartography withal resonates in the minds of cartographers. The effect regularly resurfaces during theoretical discussions about cartography and its history, or when the issue of map design is raised, or when the part of inventiveness and aesthetics in cartography is debated. However, while the discussion begins with cartography equally an fine art and a science, art and science often end up at odds with each other. The perspective of cartography as an 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 as a craft" view of cartography, or to emphasize and justify the "rational" methodologies which take allowed 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 betwixt the polarized dualism of fine art and scientific discipline which ends up shaping our thinking most cartography and mapping: cartography is an art considering it is not a scientific discipline and cartography is a scientific discipline because it is not an art. Such a negative and round way of thinking most cartography is problematic.

In order to understand such limitations and problems of the art/science dualism, it is of import to examine the unlike ways the dualism has been and is used. This examination requires a discussion of the general result of dualisms and some of their issues, besides as a word of the particular manner in which the art/science dualism has structured thinking about cartography and data graphics in full general. My intent is to provoke idea about the limitations of uncritically using the dualism of art and science equally a means of understanding cartography, aimed particularly at those who hope to reexamine the role and function of blueprint and aesthetics in cartography.

Dualisms in Geography and Cartography

The utilise 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, fine art/science. Such dualisms are certainly useful as a means of thinking and conceptualizing but become problematical when they are used uncritically. Andrew Sayer has discussed the problem of an uncritical dependence on detail dualisms in geography (Sayer 1991). There has been much commentary on the tendency for Western idea to exist structured by binary oppositions. Notwithstanding

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

The trouble is that "what impresses u.s. almost such thinking may accept more to do with its simplicity and symmetry than its power to interpret the world" (Sayer 1991 p. 284). Sayer's signal is not that dualistic thinking should be avoided, just that we should use dualisms - such as art and science - critically, paying close attention to the manner in which they structure how nosotros think, interpret, and understand 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/motorcar. 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 advisedly examined. Uncritical reliance on the simple dualism of fine art and scientific discipline, thus, may exist limiting our power to make sense out of what cartography has been (its history) and what information technology is becoming. With a sense of the trouble of uncritical dualistic thinking in mind, the next several sections examine the manner in which the art/science dualism has structured our agreement of maps and other information graphics.one

Art and Scientific discipline in Cartography: Three Approaches

The relationship between art and science has been discussed in numerous contexts including monographs past Alpers (1983) and Hartal (1988), edited collections by Wechsler (1978) and Graubard (1988), and journals such equally Leonardo, which is devoted to investigating the relations betwixt the arts and the sciences. The focal point for this study will be the literature which addresses the relationship betwixt fine art and science in cartography and other information graphics.

A review of pertinent literature reveals three basic approaches to the fine art/science question in cartography and information graphics which approximate the approaches taken past the GIS-L discussants. Start, literature which implicitly assumes that such graphics are necessarily the outcome of a "scientific" procedure and that whatever "artistic" value they may have is separate from the science and of secondary importance. I phone call this the "Polarizing Theme." Second, literature which attempts to evaluate some difference betwixt "fine art" and "scientific discipline" that may aid to found what in a map or graphic can exist considered "creative" and what can be considered "scientific." Equally this inevitably ends up conceptualizing science as progressive and art as immutable (a-progressive), I phone call this the "Progressive Theme." The 3rd arroyo, which eschews the art/scientific discipline dualism, will be discussed in the terminal section of this paper. I argue that both the polarizing and progressive approaches to the question of fine art and science in cartography and information graphics are problematical upon close test.

1. The "Polarizing Theme"

There are a number of textbooks on the topic of scientific illustration including Zbigniew Jastrzebski's Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Creative person (1985). Jastrzebski defines scientific illustration as an "art in the service of scientific discipline," equally visual "supportive material" for scientists, and as a "visual explanation of scientific studies and findings" (p. five). It is articulate that Jastrzebski considers information graphics to be products of an objective, scientific process. Such graphics are "primarily produced for the scientist and his inquiry, secondarily for the whole scientific customs. [They are] definitely not prepared for the artist himself or the accidental viewer" (Jastrzebski 1985 p. five).

A similar view is expressed by Geoffrey Lapage in his Art and the Scientist (1961). Lapage defines the "artistic qualities" constitute in graphics used by scientists equally "qualities added to a scientific analogy which are too 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 establish in the cartographic literature. A newspaper by Arpad Papp-Vary sums up a dominant viewpoint of the polarized nature of art and science in cartography:

The essential purpose of map-making has always been the cosmos of the most exact reflection of reality or the graphically true representation of space.... To reach these aims, cartographers in the past made 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 besides 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 use. The basic purpose of the maps, however, was yet to reflect reality every bit perfectly every bit was possible given the cognition of the time. The scientific problems of the verbal representation of the real world have e'er been the master and determining gene in the process of map-making, while the artistic work has merely been of secondary importance (Papp-Vary 1989 p. 106).

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

All these views reiterate the polarizing view of art and science plant in C.P. Snow's pervasive thought of the "2 Cultures:"

...the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly split into two polar groups...Literary intellectuals at 1 pole - at the other scientists. ...In our society we accept lost even the pretence of a mutual civilisation. Persons educated with the greatest intensity nosotros know tin no longer communicate with each other on the aeroplane of their major intellectual concern (Snowfall 1964 p. iii-four, 60).

The assumptions about the polarity of fine art and scientific discipline by Jastrzebski, Lapage, Papp-Vary, the British Cartographic Order, and Snowfall are simplifications which in essence practise not consider the relations between fine art and scientific discipline. Jastrzebski sees the art in scientific illustration but denies it a role; indeed in his text he hints at the possible corrupting influence of artistic expression on scientific graphics. Lapage appreciates the art more than than Jastrzebski all the same all the same sees the creative aspect as independent and unnecessary to the scientific purpose of graphics fabricated by or for scientists for their work. Papp-Vary argues, as Jastrzebski, that the art in the scientific discipline of cartography is strictly of secondary importance. The British Cartographic Society formalizes the distinction by suggesting that practising cartographers demand not engage in the "fine art" of cartography. All presume a polarizing model which just skirts the more cardinal nature of their subject. "Art" is easily separated from "science" in an overly simplistic assumption about the dualistic nature of art and science.

two. The "Progressive Theme"

A second and more circuitous 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 difference betwixt "art" and "science" that may help to establish what tin can be considered "artistic" and what can be considered "scientific." The progressive theme consists of two arguments. The first concerns the different style that art and science treat their past, and how this can be used to differentiate the creative from the scientific aspects of maps and other information graphics. The second statement suggests that art and science serve different functions in maps and information graphics.

2.one. Progressive Scientific discipline and A-Progressive Art

Historian of scientific discipline Thomas Kuhn articulates the dissimilar manner in which art and science deal with their past - what Kuhn calls the nearly obvious difference between art and scientific discipline: "The past products of artistic activity are still vital parts of the artistic scene" while "in science new breakthrough do initiate the removal of suddenly outdated books and journals from their agile position in a science library ... unlike art, science 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 diverse (scientific) illustrations from the past continue to requite pleasure, their usefulness tends to diminish with the passage of fourth dimension because scientific language and the concerns associated with it changes, whether it be visual or ordinary language. If it is the work of a great artist, information technology may pass time'south test and live on, passing into 'art' if it is no longer 'scientific discipline,' rather than being a casualty of progress (Knight 1985 p. 124).

Such an statement is evident in the cartographic literature and is characterized by a belief in the progression in the "scientific" quality of maps from the "simple," "poor," and even "pathetic" maps of "archaic" peoples or of our predecessors up to the "accurate" and "objective" maps of today. This is peculiarly evident in older literature on the maps of "primitive" cultures such every bit the American Indian (Burland 1947/48), and of commentary on Medieval Mappaemundi (Beazley 1897). Old maps are interesting primarily considering of their quaint "creative" nature. Their "scientific discipline," if there is whatever, is outdated and not of import. Arthur Robinson notes that "[t]he older is a flat map or a world map, the more likely it is to exist called an art object" (Robinson 1989 p. 94). It is, and so, 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 exist works of art, the products of individual minds, and where adroitness was finally superseded by science and the car; this came in the second one-half of the eighteenth century" (Bagrow 1964 p. 22). Bagrow's sentiments are common. Ronald Rees, in his give-and-take of the historical links betwixt cartography and fine art, writes "until scientific discipline claimed cartography, mapmaking and landscape painting were kindred activities, often performed by the same hand" (Rees 1980 p. sixty). Bagrow and Rees, while evidently concerned with the "art" in cartography, certainly do fine art no service past implying that it has a static nature, then easily superseded and snuffed out past progressive science.

Robert Root-Bernstein has evaluated the differentiation of art from science by the fashion each treats their past and institute information technology wanting:

...traditions do not change any more rapidly in scientific discipline than elsewhere. Remaining adherents to pass� theories are not necessarily disbarred from the profession. Science does non automatically pass up its past for innovation. On the contrary, science is a selective process that weeds out bad ideas, irreproducible results, and incorrect problem solutions to go out 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 exist more similarity than difference in the way that art and science treat their past:

I suggest that artists reject earlier traditions of art for the aforementioned reason that scientists reject before traditions of science: the old problems are solved; new ones wait. Certainly an artist could choose to paint like Rembrandt just every bit a scientist could choose to perform experiments on falling bodies similar to those conducted by Galileo. But painting like Rembrandt tells us no more than about perception and solves no new issues of the use of light than Rembrandt already did, only as 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 subject area new methods, new perceptions, or new phenomena that raise new problems for colleagues to address (Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 111).

A similar statement has been used to critique the fashion in which cartography has relied on the supposition that the "art" in quondam maps is immutable while the science is outdated, superceded by more authentic 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 array of cultural, social, economic, and political issues. An culling view of cartography can exist formulated, where cartography is "not a neutral activeness divorced from the power relations of any homo order, past or nowadays [and] there is no single nor necessarily best way in which to correspond either the social or physical worlds" (Edney 1993 p. 54). Edney argues for understanding cartography as "composed of a number of modes" defined as historically contingent "sets of cultural social, and technological relations which define cartographic practices and which determine the graphic symbol 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 "At that place is not hard and fast stardom between the 'art' and the 'science' of cartography; nor is it that 'cartography is both an fine art and a scientific discipline..." (Edney 1993 p. 54). Instead, each "cartographic way" is the result of particular historical (cultural, social, political) circumstances, and the distinction between what is defined as "art" and "science" varies from mode to way. To impose a detail notion of art and science (defined by our particular tardily 20th century Western cartographic mode) on all maps ignores both historical and contemporary differences in the style in which art and science are defined. It is, then, problematic to sustain the statement that science is progressive and art is a-progressive and, thus, to use such declared differences to distinguish fine art from scientific discipline in information graphics and maps.

two.two. The Differing Function of Art and Science in Data Graphics and Cartography

The 2nd argument of the progressive approach suggests that art and scientific discipline serve a different function in maps and data graphics. Kuhn has also argued that there is a major divergence 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 appeal. The scientific illustrations, on the other paw, are at all-time past-products of scientific activity (Kuhn 1977 p. 342).

Thus, Kuhn sees a difference between ends - the visual product or language of an artist, and ways - the visual production or linguistic communication of a scientist. Kuhn sees something like in the idea of the aesthetic and how information technology differs in art and in scientific discipline:

...in the arts, the aesthetic is itself the goal of the piece of work. In the sciences it is, at all-time, again a tool: a benchmark of selection 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. Just if it unlocks the puzzle, only if the scientist's aesthetic turns out to coincide with nature'south, does it play a role in the evolution of scientific discipline. In the sciences the aesthetic is seldom an cease in itself and never the primary ane (Kuhn 1977 p. 342).

Kuhn does discern similarities in art and science that are of import. For instance, they both must deal with technical bug which must be solved for the end product to exist realized. Kuhn continues:

...the scientist, like the creative person, is guided past artful considerations and governed by established modes of perception. But an exclusive emphasis upon those parallels obscures a vital difference. Whatsoever the term "aesthetic" may mean, the artist'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 creative person are means for the scientist, and vice versa (Kuhn 1977 p. 343).

Similar sentiments are expressed by cartographers. Keates sees an immutable aesthetic chemical element in mapping, an "art" which cannot be accounted for past progressive "scientific discipline." The aesthetic and art of cartography is then used to critique what Keates sees every bit the over-dependence on the "scientific discipline" of cartography. "I like to depict attention to the fact that at that place are realms of human being feel which are non - and never will be - products of science; and although few of us can aspire to create them, we can - and should, enjoy them" (Keates 1984 p. 43). Yet this artful element in cartography is distinct from scientific discipline, and it is possible "for a map [to] be 'well designed' in a functional sense without creating annihilation of the artful property we can sense in other things" (Keates 1984 p. 41). Art, in the cease, serves a different function than science and demand non be part of the successfully designed map.

Robinson argues along similar lines, noting that there are 2 types of "man-made things responded to aesthetically": the fine arts, which create "non-purposeful art objects" such as 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 every bit maps, which are "enjoyed as a means to something else" (Robinson 1989 p. 92). In this case, the map is substantially a useful and purposeful object, employing sure "artistic means" to achieve an end which must exist "something else," a something else which is, logically, non-artistic; ie., scientific. The cartographer, then, uses artistic means to reach a broader scientific end; the fine art in a map, thus, serves a different function than the science in a map.

Robert Root-Bernstein has too evaluated the differentiation of fine art from scientific discipline by asserting their dissimilar functions. Kuhn argues that the "artful" is the artist's goal and the scientist'southward tool. Thus, the role 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 artful means. Keates and Robinson identify a like argument 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 try � a scientist's monograph (explaining a solution to some scientific puzzle) is analogous to an artist's painting, for instance. Both are ends. To this analogy, it seems, Kuhn would agree.

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

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

And Alexander von Humboldt:

In the uniform plain bounded only by a distant 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 embankment, leave a rails, green with the weeds of the ocean; everywhere, the listen is penetrated past the same sense of the grandeur and vast surface area of nature, revealing to the soul, by a mysterious inspiration, the beingness of laws that regulate the forces of the universe (Humboldt 1844 p. 25).

In both cases, fine art and science seem to serve similar functions. Farther, similarities between scientific and artistic activity take been commented upon quite frequently. The journal Leonardo features manufactures by "artistic scientists" and "scientific artists." Indeed, the articles in Leonardo often conclude that attempts to polarize art and science are bound to end in defoliation. Instead, the focus is on goals and ideals and methods shared by artists and scientists: both art and science serve similar functions. Art historian E.H. Gombrich has noted that

...the task of setting downward a pictorial likeness on a flat surface bears a startling resemblance to the method used past scientists in arriving at a theoretical picture of the natural earth. In representing the appearance of things, the creative person does not but trace an outline of their visual contours, merely prepares instead a hypothetical construction to be matched and so modified in calorie-free of further feel. Through an alternating sequence of "makings and matchings" the creative person gradually eliminates the discrepancies between 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 example to exist made for functional similarity, and thus structural divergence in art and science. 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 common pursuit "is mirrored in common methods" (Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 109). Thus, paintings are coordinating, structurally, to experiments, art galleries to scientific meetings. Paintings are not, then, an terminate but instead are a means, like an experiment. Established theory, in science likewise as art, "is simply an approximation to perceived reality that permits predictions to exist fabricated virtually the unknown." Physicists deal with indicate masses and curved infinite, chemists with energy and atoms � "science, similar fine art, has its perceptual conventions � its approximately-but-not-quite-true models of the world" (Root-Bernstein 1984 p. 113). Art and scientific discipline - yet defined - serve similar functions.

Judith Wechsler has come up to a conclusion similar to Root-Bernstein's. Wechsler argues that art and science both strive for "fit" � the "most appropriate, evocative and correspondent expression of reality heretofore unarticulated and unperceived, but strongly sensed and actively probed" (Wechsler 1978 p. 1). Wechsler farther argues that aesthetics guide the search for "fit" in both art and scientific discipline:

Viewed as a way of knowing, aesthetics in science is concerned with the metaphorical and analogical relationship betwixt reality and concepts, theories and models. The search in scientific discipline for models that illuminate nature seems to parallel certain crucial processes in art, equally Cyril Smith points out: they share a cardinal evocative quality (Wechsler 1978 p. 6).

Relating this dorsum to the field of study at hand, information technology is plausible that the function of "art" and of "science" in information graphics and cartography are more like than different: both provide a structurally varying means to perceive, interpret, conjecture, make statements about and control nature. They provide different ways to the same terminate. What "art" does and what "science" does is not really that different - it is more a matter of how 1 goes most the process, and how one goes about any process differs equally much within the various "arts" and the diverse "sciences" as it does between them (Stafford 1994). Art and science are past no means the aforementioned thing; all the same, their similarities and complex interactions are such to preclude any attempt at strict segregation via either the polarizing or progressive approaches. Adhering to the presumed dualism of fine art and science, then, is problematical as a means of understanding cartography.

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

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

Such clashing critiques are seldom commented upon past practitioners of "scientific" cartographic design, but Dobson (1985) responded to Petchenik's (1983) critique of the scientific discipline of cartographic design. Dobson in essence argues that such critiques are "misguided" and "naive" and not very scientific in their critique of the scientific discipline of cartographic design (pp. 27-28). My reading of this debate suggests that "art" (aesthetics, intuition, creativity) is used to clobber scientific discipline, and scientific discipline (rationality, reason, analytical, objective) is used to clobber art. Art and scientific discipline, whatever 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 unmarried out the artistic or scientific aspects of maps and information graphics based on the simple (polarizing or progressive) art/science dualism, and so, cartographers and other individuals interested in maps and data graphics may exist asking the incorrect questions. I argue that assuming fine art and science as polarized oppositions to each other is problematical, that assuming art to be a-progressive and science progressive is problematical, and that assuming fine art and science serve differing functions in the context of data graphics and cartography is problematical. If cartographers are to reconsider the role of aesthetics, design, and inventiveness in cartography, as called for by Keates and others, and so nosotros are going to have to discard the problematic assumptions of the art/scientific discipline dualism, turning instead to inquiries into the unlike ways that what we vaguely ascertain as art and science together shape maps and cartography within dissimilar contexts and for different purposes.

3. Cartography as Not Art and Science

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

Brian Harley and Denis Wood have "deconstructed" and critiqued many of what they see as the fundamental assumptions underpinning cartography and have reconceptualized cartography as an role player in the process of social and cultural formation and transformation (Harley 1987, Harley 1989b, Forest 1992). Within this context, the continued utilise of the fine art/science dualism by cartographers is understood equally a reflection of scient-ism - the misguided construction of a progressive, objective, and de-contextualized history of cartography (Harley 1989a, Edney 1993). Equally 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 two concentric ideas. It situates the map artifact inside the mapmaking process, and information technology places the entire mapmaking process within the context of intracultural and intercultural dialogues occurring over a much longer span of fourth dimension (Rundstrom 1991 p. 6).

This procedure-oriented approach to cartography is revealed in studies such as those by Wood and Brook (1989), McCleary (1990), and Pandya (1990). Such a perspective allows cartographers to examine how maps function in different historical, cultural, social, and political contexts. We can reexamine materials such as Harrison's Await at the World (1944) and Raisz's Atlas of Global Geography (1944) not equally quaint quondam maps but every bit spectacular new ways of seeing and understanding the world given the particular circumstances of the start 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 demand and possibility of separating "art" from "science."

In a similar vein and from a critical and technological perspective, hypermedia is touted as a means of reconstructing the deconstructed; an everchangable, non-linear, unbounded, decenterable, and hyper-relational process for organizing and reorganizing noesis (Krygier 1994). Remarkably, the near fertile work in hypermedia is developing from the convergence of piece of work by literary theorists and computer scientists (Landow 1992). That the ideas and goals of literary "artists" and calculator "scientists" should converge to create i of the more heady theoretical and technological developments of the late 20th century lends support to the inadequacy of the art/science dualism.

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

Cerebral, 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, equally with hypermedia, the virtually exciting developments in visualization are driven by the convergence of the functionally similar work of "artists" and "scientists." The "yoking" of fine art and science has been surpassed by the thought of "renaissance teams" in the practise of scientific visualization. Donna Cox has described the process of artists and scientists working together on circuitous scientific visualizations (Cox 1990, 1991). The product of such collaborations (including the ubiquitous NCSA Storm Cloud Visualization) are not easily describable equally either fine art or science. They would not be without the input of both artists and scientists and are something more than merely a simplistic mixture of art and science. Notwithstanding defined, art and science serve similar functions in attempting to envision and understand complex ideas, theories, and data. There is, then, something "emergent" which arises out of such collaborations. Accordingly, the dualism of art and science - via the polarizing or progressive themes - is not peculiarly useful as a means of understanding the products of such collaborations. Similar approaches can be found in cartography, where (carto)graphic designers work in tandem with scientists in shaping visualization methods for enquiry and educational activity (DiBiase et. al 1994, Krygier et. al 1995). Attending is thus shifted to the process of understanding and noesis construction, the fashion in which ideas are shaped and clarified, and the ways in which we come to know and re-know our world. How this occurs, rather than "is it scientific discipline?" or "is it fine art?" becomes the focus.

Conclusions

I began this paper by noting that official definitions of cartography take at different times included and excluded the idea of cartography equally an fine art and a science. I show that regardless of current definitions, the idea of art and science - still vaguely divers - still shape current discussions and thinking about cartography. The reasons for this are two-fold. The idea of cartography equally an fine art and a science has an extensive history and is well established to the caste that it is hard to not refer to it in our general discussions of cartography. Changing the official definition of cartography does not necessarily modify the mode we think about cartography. Nevertheless it also 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 bug tend to channel their discussions into the art/science dualism, in effect posturing themselves against the "science" of cartography which is seen to have dominated the last several decades of cartographic research. While I am sympathetic to the want to reconsider aesthetics, design, and visual expression in cartography, I am dispute of the utility of using the fine art/scientific discipline dualism as a ground for this reconsideration.

I examine two means that cartographers and others take defined the relation between fine art and scientific discipline 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 suggest that we consider the consequences of thinking without the problematic art/scientific discipline dualism.

Trends such as postmodern deconstruction, hypermedia, cognitive psychology, semiotics, geographical information systems, and visualization all point to a procedure oriented ways of understanding cartography. Visual methods such as cartography help in this process of agreement and knowledge structure, in shaping and clarifying ideas, and in the different ways in which we come to know and re-know our globe. Such a process is culturally, historically, socially, and politically contingent and ever evolving, producing new questions, ideas, and issues which continually face u.s.. I suggest that within this process we consider the function of art and science - however defined - to exist similar, discarding the problematical reliance on the art/science dualism. Equally an culling, I propose that we examine particular instances where "art" and "science" have converged - episodes such as the global cartographies of the 1940s, the theoretically infused applied science of hypermedia, and the renaissance teams of scientific visualization - to guide a reconsideration of the role of aesthetics, pattern, 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 employ this generic term primarily to avoid awkward references to the various different forms of graphics discussed in the paper.

Acknowledgements: For effective comments and criticism thanks to Cindy Brewer, David DiBiase, Matthew Edney, David Greenish, Nik Huffman, Alan MacEachren, Annie Newman, David Woodward, and two anonymous reviewers.

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