On cognitive mapping · March 18th, 2006
“Mapmaking fulfils one of our deepest desires: understanding the world around us and our place in it. But maps need not show just continent and oceans. 1” By nature maps are inherently spatial, yet they are often used as a metaphor for mental processes. Ultimately, maps are a mean to an end: unlike mere pictures, they carry additional functions and purposes, they transmit information. “Maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, processes, conditions, or events in the human world. 2” Most importantly, all maps are ‘indexical’, i.e. their meaning is dependent for their truth on their context. A Ptolemaic map from the second century A.D. (illustration) looks remarkably accurate for its time whereas the Ebstorf map featured in the illustration below presents a somewhat malformed view of the world, apparently against the sense of progress. Yet it serves religious interests as well as topographical ones; it is embedded in conventions and symbolism of early Western Christian mappaemundi (maps of the world). Such maps, dubbed ‘T-O’ divided the world by three major waterways symbolising the cross, with east at the top and Jerusalem at the centre.
Mental maps versus physical cartography
Mental maps are a personal way of representing geographical space: instead of considering a place in its absolute sense, a mental map looks at it in relation with other places emotionally close. Each mental map is particular to the the environmental perception of its author, the images they have of their own life, known places and the way they are connected.
Cognitive maps shows not just where we are and what we know, but who we are. Because of their serendipitous quality, they have a great potential for the discovery of relationships not explicitly intended; they allow appreciating the internalised spatial structure upon which a person is operating. The most significant differences are those between people (or the same person at different points in time) of the same places. “It’s possible to take one geographical area and to demonstrate that it really consists of a set of overlapping places depending on which group of people we are considering. 3” Mental maps are thus interesting indicators of how we interpret our neighbourhood.
1 Katharine Harmon, You are Here, Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination . New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.
2 Harley and Wooward , The History of Cartography , 1987, p.16 quoted by David Turnbull, Maps are Territories, Science is an Atlas. University of Chicago Press , 1994, p.3.
3 David Canter, Psychology of Place. Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p.68.
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March 5th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Early maps were little more than crude diagrams sketched in the dirt, showing paths and destinations within a local area. Cognitive maps gained from personal experience, transformed into symbolic visual representation thus provided humans with a powerful cooperative advantage.
Adapted from ‘Ambient Findability’, Peter Morville, O’Reilly publishers
September 28th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
‘Parts of it we would recognise as geographical reality, the rest we would dismiss as myth and fancy.’
Interestingly, equal significance is given to celestial and terrestrial spheres; both are considered to be properly part of the reality in which human life is lived.
Such maps intend to make the world visible, present geography and order the world for people to see and understand their relationship with it.
Social formation and symbolic landscape, Denis Cosgrove (1984), p. 8-9
March 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
[...] de pélerinages (voir les précedents articles au sujet du ‘wayfinding’: On Cognitive Mapping, ou l’Itinerary map de Matthew Paris) . Elles alignaient des injonctions performatives le [...]