Explicating the Observational Preconception of the Ideal of Cartography

An unequivocal statement of the idea that maps necessarily constitute “a god’s eye view” of the world

F. C. Wieder (1925–33, 1: ix) opened the preface to volume 1 of his 5-volume Monumenta cartographica with a statement that positively exults in the observational preconception (Edney 2019, 76–83), that all maps are properly based on observation, preferably from above. I thought it worth sharing, especially as Wieder used it to construct a metanarrative for map history:

The history of cartography is the history of the development of a human symbol. In our time this symbol is once again attracting more than usual attention, as a far-reaching change in its development may be expected when the new method of photography from the air has been generally applied. During the last few centuries it has been the ideal of cartography to represent the earth, and various parts of it, as they would appear when looked at from a sufficient height to embrace the whole country represented, and maps have acquired such a measure of accuracy and faithfulness to the original that they reproduce, that in many cases air photographs look like maps. It is no small achievement of the art that it reached such a pitch of perfection as to anticipate its future expansion even before the required methods were placed at its disposal.

Wow! Such a succinct statement of the observational preconception, which bleeds neatly in the technologically grounded metanarratives of progress advanced for the history of cartography, and which prefigures the statements that would be made during and after World War II that mapping had advanced to a state of near perfection (so how did we get to this state? for an answer, read Brown’s Maps and Man or Crone’s Maps and Map-Makers). More grist for “Narrating the ‘History of Cartograhy,’” chapter 6 of Understanding Maps and Map History.

My new favoretist quotation of the moment.

Edney, Matthew H. 2019. Cartography: The Ideal and Its History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wieder, F. C. 1925–1933. Monumenta cartographica: Reproductions of Unique and Rare Maps, Plans and Views in the Actual Size of the Originals; Accompanied by Cartographical Monographs. 5 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.