When Maps Become the World
When Maps Become the World by Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, published by University of Chicago Press on June 29, 2020, is a thought-provoking exploration of the role of maps in shaping our understanding of the world. This first edition, comprising 348 pages, delves into the concept of map making and map thinking, emphasizing its prevalence across various fields such as literature, science, and psychology. Winther examines how maps serve as powerful tools that can both clarify and distort our perceptions of reality.
In this book, readers will find an analysis of the promises and perils associated with map thinking. Winther discusses how maps, as purpose-driven abstractions, highlight specific features of a territory while omitting others, potentially reinforcing certain viewpoints. He illustrates how scientific theories and models function as maps that influence our understanding of the world, often leading us to conflate these representations with reality. By tracing the evolution of historical representations in science and cartography, Winther reveals how these narratives can dominate social discourse and reshape our collective understanding of existence.
Official synopsis Publisher
Map making and, ultimately, map thinking is ubiquitous across literature, cosmology, mathematics, psychology, and genetics. We partition, summarize, organize, and clarify our world via spatialized representations. Our maps and, more generally, our representations seduce and persuade; they build and destroy. They are the ultimate record of empires and of our evolving comprehension of our world.
This book is about the promises and perils of map thinking. Maps are purpose-driven abstractions, discarding detail to highlight only particular features of a territory. By preserving certain features at the expense of others, they can be used to reinforce a privileged position.
When Maps Become the World shows us how the scientific theories, models, and concepts we use to intervene in the world function as maps, and explores the consequences of this, both good and bad. We increasingly understand the world around us in terms of models, to the extent that we often take the models for reality. Winther explains how in time, our historical representations in science, in cartography, and in our stories about ourselves replace individual memories and become dominant social narratives—they become reality, and they can remake the world.
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