the power of map

8/10/2019 The Power of Map

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2 One: The Multiple Truths of the Mappable World

hard to say that this was that, and that was this. This is trueeven in the moment, much less in the mind, or in thememory a day, a week, a month or longer later.

But, damnit!We did have lunch together.Sure, okay, if thats all you want to say: we had lunch.There maybesomething we can call the truth if we keep

it so simple it doesnt matter.

Two Peoples, a World Apart

Two people, two feet apart. What if theyd been twopeoples a world apart? What if theyd been inhabitants ofNew York and Beijing contemplating the U.S. bombing ofthe Chinese embassy in Belgrade?

If all we can say of the truth is that bombs fell on abuilding we might as well say nothing. Because it is not

about that. Thats ... past. It is about now and tomorrow. Itis about who will apologize (if anyone) to whom? It is aboutwhat was really going on, and if thiswerea sign what it is asign of, and is it reasonable to have bombs? It is about whatlife means if it can end this way. It is about stuff like that.

Its hot out here, one says.It sure is, says the other.

Its this here global warming, says the first, too manycars.

Bullshit, says the second.It was easy to agree about it being hot, but attribut-

ing the heat to the cars implies a course of correctiveaction. That raises the stakes. Suddenly it is a matter ofperception. Is it reallyhotter than it used to be? Or isthis a perspectiveeffect? If it is hotter, is this usualorunusual. If unusual, did peoplecause it? If we did, whatcanwedo about it?

You might ask, Well, what about someone across thestreet watching the two of you having lunch? Wouldntthey have an objectiveview? What about the UN

perspective on the bombing? What doessciencehave to sayabout global warming?

And, yes, each has its truth too, but there are threetruths now instead of two. Three truths ... or more. TheUN scarcely speaks in a single voice, and in the case ofscience speaking about global warming were talking about

dozens and dozens of truths.How many can we stand?How do we act if we dont know whats true? Isnt life

hard enough already without adding to it the uncertaintyof there being many truths or maybe even none at all?Frankly, life is hard enough already without pretending

it is only onetrue thing.

We were lost. A security guard at Duke University in Durham, NorthCarolina, drew t his map of the best way to get from Duke to Angier Avenue.(1993).


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details are going to beleft out. It is like

telling a story. Ifsomeone wants it toldin 60 seconds thedetails that wouldmake it last an hourhave to go. You justhit the main points.

This isnt lying. It isnot incompletenesseither. When map-makers just hit the

main points, ignoring, say, all the tiny twists and turns ofa coastline, they call it generalization.

Similarly, Mercators failure to give places their prop-er proportions doesnt amount to lying, nor is it fair tothink about it as inaccurate. The changes in proportional-ity are smooth, continuous and predictable. They are nec-essary consequences of the manipulations Mercator had tocarry out in order to make compass bearings straight lines.

To make all this clearer, here is another world map.

And what a different world!This is called the Peters map, after Arno Peters whointroduced it in 1974. Unlike Mercator whose purposewas to help sailors, Peterss purpose was to help the restof us. Peters believed that widespread use of Mercatormaps for all kinds of purposes that had nothing to dowith navigation had built up in our minds a greatly

distorted image of the world.It is fair to say Peters was especially concerned about

our image of Africa and those other countries around

the equator that were given short-shrift as aconsequence of the Mercator projection. On a Mercator

the former Soviet Union ismuch larger than Africa.Wouldnt people looking at such a map imagine that theSoviet Union was much more important than Africa?

Africa is actually about the size of the former SovietUnion andthe United States combined. A frica issubstantially larger than the United States and the currentRussia. If size were what mattered Africa would rank

second in importance only to Asia. Europe would competewith Australia for last place. There is no question that thePeters makes this much more evident than the Mercator.

One: The Multiple Truths of the Mappable World 9

What a dif ferent world th is seems to be. T his is a projection of the worl d that givesareas their t rue relati ve size. You can easi ly see how much l arger South Americais than Europe. On the other hand, compass beari ngs are not str aight on thi s map.M aps reall y are l ike point s of view.

Map Words

Generalization: When map-makers smooth out coastlinesor take the kinks out of riversto give the general idea, aswhen they are showing thewhole Mississippi or the wholeEast Coast of North America,they call it a generalization.


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Which map is right?Theyre both right. Theyre just right about different

things. But again, theyre both wrong too.Focus on the shapes of the continents. First hold the Peters

up next to a globe. Is Africa really so tall and skinny? Is Alaskaso stringy? The shapes on the Peters are precisely as distortedas sizes on the Mercator. The loss of good shape, what map-

makers call conformality, isone of the things Peters hadto sacrifice to keep the areasof places in their proper pro-

portions.On the other hand, the

Mercator doesshow trueshapes. This is somethingwe will have more to sayabout later on, but if youcompare shapes on theMercator with those on theglobe you will see that ifshapes aretrue, they are

true in a very peculiar way.In fact, shapes are only locallytrue on the Mercator.

That is, shapes are true in this little spot here, andshapes are true in that little spot there. But because sizes

change so drastically, when you look at something as bigas a continent you have one small true shape toward theequator (say Mexico), and another small true shape nearthe pole (say Alaska), but the latter is so many times largerthan the former, that when you put them together, theshape of North America as a whole is not right.

Its as if you were to draw a picture of someones face,

and you got the shape of the chin right, and you got theshape of the forehead right, but you made the foreheadten times larger than the chin. Then even though everypart was right, the shape of the whole face would seemto be wrong.

Shapes get truer and truer the more you zoom inonthe Mercator. This is why the Mercator is so widely usedtoday for mapping small areas in great detail.

10 One: The Multiple Truths of the Mappable World

A head drawn one one projecti on (Robinsons) has been t ransferr ed to the Mercator ( center left) and a sinusoidal ( center r ight) and final ly to a Mollweide (far r ight) .T he natur al profi le could have been drawn on any of these and then plotted on the others. T hi s is just a way of gett ing of sense of what di fferent projecti ons do.

Map Words

Conformality: this is theability of a map to perserveangular relationships as theyexist on the globe. Whatthis means is that the mapcan show shapes the way

they are. A conformal mapcannot show areas in theirtrue size.


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Each Map Has I ts Own Point of View

So which map should you use?

You should use the map that serves your purpose. Onlywhen you are given a maps purpose, can the maps right-ness its truth be assessed.

If youre flying across the ocean the Mercator is goingto be useful, but if youre trying to compare the sizes ofplaces you will want to use the Peters. If youre trying tofind your way from Duke to Angier Avenue, neither will

be the slightest help.We need a local point of view to get across town. We

need a comparative perspective to get sizes right. Weneed the point of view of a compass to fly across theocean.

Every map takes a point of view. No map can show

everything at once any more than the two of us could seethe same things at the same time at lunch. At the veryleast, if we were to see each other, we couldnt seeourselves! Besides, sometimes one of us was in thekitchen getting the coffee, or visiting the bathroom.Then our experiences of the meal were sharply divided.One of us might ask, Remember that bird a minute ago

that and the other will say, No, I was in the kitchengetting the coffee, but you told me about it. Yet we didhave lunch together.

The map that is, as it were, getting the coffee(makingcompass bearings straight) cant be sitting on the porchtaking in the scene(showing places in their properproportions). Yet there is only one planet.

It takes many different eyes to see it all, and many dif-ferent maps to show it. That this is a strength, not aweakness, is what the rest of this book is about.

Chapter Title Placeholder 11

2001. ODT, Inc. All rights reserved

Seeing Through Maps:The Power of Images toShape Our World View

by Ward L. Kaiser & Denis WoodODT Inc., Amherst, MA ($19.95)

1-800-736-1293

to be published summer 2001

the power of map

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