Pablo Iván Azócar Fernández and Manfred Buchroithner, Paradigms in Cartography: An Epistemological Review of the 20th and 21st Centuries, Berlin, Springer, 2014, 150 pages, 14 illus., £72.00 ebook, £90.00 hardcover, ISBN 978-3-642-38893-4.
Paradigms in Cartography is a philosophical book that examines cartography through the lens of Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory. The central question around which this text revolves is whether over the past century cartography has gone through a paradigm shift, or indeed through multiple paradigm shifts. According to Kuhn, in science, those operating within an established paradigm do "normal science," while scientists operating within the new paradigm ask entirely new questions using different methods. However, the new paradigm is often recognized as such only posthumously. In cartography this is complicated because the shift took the discipline well away from its associations with positivism, reductionism, and other philosophies very closely associated with the scientific method. This revolution occurred, due in large part to the work of Brian Harley, late in the 1980s. Cartography was "deconstructed" and, in the process, knocked off its pedestal. At the same time new horizons opened up for cartographic and artistic practice.
This book is timely and important because it picks up at the point of a second paradigm shift in cartography that, according to the authors, has occurred in the last decade or so. This is a shift from representational approaches to cartography towards those that go beyond representation and exist in a constant state of becoming and is best exemplified by Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge’s work. The book takes the reader first through philosophical thought, and second, through cartographic theory, practice, and development in light of that philosophical thought towards, ultimately, an understanding of post-representational cartographies. The latter include both traditional and new digital (e.g. dynamic or animated online) maps.
One of the first things that struck me upon beginning to read this book was how little the authors had to say about geographic information systems (GIS). GIS figures very little into this account of how paradigms have shifted in cartography over the last century or so. The question became, for me, whether GIS might be irrelevant to the evolution of cartography. But, as a critical GIS scholar, I have a difficult time separating GIS from cartography and, indeed, it is a weakness of this book that it fails to explicitly address the role geographic information technologies, more generally, have played in the production of paradigm-shifting cartographies. This role is often implicit, as the authors know very well, and their comprehensive knowledge of the subject is evidenced by a very competent overview of cartographic development post-1900.
Thomas Kuhn, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Immanuel Kant figure very prominently in the philosophical underpinnings of this book. The theoretical framing is sophisticated and well-worked out and by the end we are led to a nuanced understanding of how the idea of paradigm plays out when it is rigorously applied to cartographic representations and practices. The two shifts identified by the authors—the "Harleian one" in the late-1980s and the postrepresentational—were driven by philosophical considerations, as opposed to technological imperatives or changes. This is another way of saying that the debates and arguments that appeared in places like Cartographica and Progress in Human Geography were mostly confined to academia with very little impact on the outside world.
Technological changes implicit to changing cartographic paradigms, on the other hand, include the formal separation of geographic from cartographic representations. This shift in the representational nature of geographic information and data is alluded to in Paradigms, but it seems to escape the final equation of paradigm-shifts being driven by moves away from representational philosophies. This explains, in large part, the lack of attention given to GIS. The latter, and its reliance upon powerful new spatial database technologies, is mostly responsible for the separation of representations (i.e. the geographical from the cartographic), and a renewed imperative upon issues of representation in, for example, geographical pedagogy would not be misplaced.
The limits of language do indeed form the limits of (cartographic) worlds, and it is the invention of new languages for not only talking about, but also for doing cartography that pushes both technological and scholarly mappings in new directions. The (sometimes unsubtle) use of diagrams for visualizing potential directions for such change to occur is characterized in Paradigms as the mapping of epistemological spaces, showing locations in the philosophical terrain where productive ground remains. Almost ironically, the triangular diagrams favored by the authors do tend, at times, to reify cartographic philosophical spaces, reducing them to abstract exercises in ‘connecting the dots’ between paradigm shifts. In reality things are neither this easy, nor are they ever so simple. White blanks produced between ‘data points’ aligned along or at mid-points between alleged categories of cartographic thinking both over-simplify and over-state the case for paradigms in cartography. Paradigm-as-diagrammatic-space tends to assert a philosophical representationalism disavowed in the text.
For example, the writings of late Wittgenstein are taken to lend themselves to a cartographic shift to post-representational cartographies. But the logic of the text of Paradigms in Cartography speaks differently. ‘True’ 3D cartography, one of the more esoteric developments of the early twenty-first century, is highlighted in this regard. Lenticular lenses are used to deflect image-halves to the left and right eyes to produce "real" 3D images. This method of producing 3D images is part of a lineage going back to the use of special glasses or stereoscopes to "correspond" portions of images to the eyes in a way that "tricks" the viewer into seeing in 3D.
The representational logic of 3D imaging could not be more intense, and it is a development in the realm of technique that runs counter to an alleged academic paradigm shift to post-representational cartographies. One might refer to this parallel paradigm shift as "representationalism reified." Again, the authors are intensely aware of the fact that something is going on in 3D cartography that does not quite mesh with academic philosophies on the subject. This mismatch is addressed in a very complicated penultimate chapter in which the "3D revolution" is posited as a sort of sub-revolution, occurring beneath, or as trace beneath a more robust post-representational overlay.
The resulting picture is overall somewhat confusing. Nevertheless, Paradigms in Cartography remains an important book. Its significance lies in starting a much-needed conversation around what constitutes the science "in" cartography, and how the idea of paradigm drives an ever-evolving positivistic kernel of the alleged science. It is precisely here that GIS enters the picture, and this reviewer feels that another chapter, covering the GIS "revolution" (or paradigm?) would not have been misplaced. I could not help but think that we (scholars of cartographic thought, critical cartography and GIS and the like) might soon find ourselves in need of something along the lines of a paper or book called Paradigms in GIS to serve as counter-weight and corrective to this book.
In the meantime, Paradigms in Cartography will be of great value in classrooms precisely because it raises all of the questions and concerns noted above. This pedagogical value stems also in no small part from the level of philosophical engagement the authors bring to the text. Ultimately it might also send readers reaching for Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) and Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (2001) from the shelves, the better to re-acquaint ourselves with philosophies very convincingly demonstrated to form the bedrock of more recent debates about power and representation in cartography.
References
Kuhn T (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wittgenstein L (2001) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London and New York: Routledge.
