168 quotes found
"A special target of examination ought to be how societies differ in making room for pauses in the midst of life, for it is during such pauses that individuals are able to appraise the meaning of what they have undergone."
"In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold."
"America is a much newer experiment in human living, one with moral concerns at its core. In this respect it differs from Europe, which has preferred sophistication and worldly wisdom to "righteousness," and resembles China, which saw the universe itself as essentially a moral order. However materialistic Americans may be in their economic pursuits, their ceremonies emphasize the material far less than European societies have. America has imposing official architecture. Washington, D.C., boasts a radial baroque stateliness. Yet one of its most important buildings, the White House, is a modest dwelling, its scale far smaller than that of the palaces of Europe and Asia."
"Young children distinguish between good people and bad people, but, unless explicitly taught, they do not distinguish between foreigner and native."
"...the Oxford system, which did not require students to take set courses or be tested except at the end of three years, encouraged them to read widely, attend public lectures on all sorts of subjects, and above all, talk to one another in small gatherings until dawn breaks or until they ran out of shillings to put in the gas meter. Without knowing it I acquired a well-rounded, if undisciplined, liberal arts education."
"Unlike a small village, the city speaks loud and clear of history, of being the terminus of a long, cumulative process."
"Children learn early in life that they cannot always count on their parents’ attention much less their smiles, a lesson in human unpredictability that has to be learned over and over again."
"for humans, no matter what the warmth and duration of human contact and what the size of the group, a periodic sense of isolation is inescapable; it is no less than the human condition."
"The ease with which a man can lose his sense of self-worth and fall into the pit of self-abasement is a deeply disturbing psychological fact. Asymmetry of power doesn’t have to be extreme for it to happen. All that is required is for it to seem implacable."
"Only God creates ex nihilo. Humans can only create out of something that already exists, which means there has to be an earlier destruction phase."
"Ideally, society is a dance, and every society has its own choreography that is passed down the generations."
"At the highest level of achievement, classical music has the feel of an intimate conversation between two individuals and a mass celebration of our common humanity."
"Stars define civilization, as no single natural feature on Earth--tree, rock, stream, or mountain--can be said to define cultures."
"Words designate, but they also evoke a sense of something, and, when they do, they function as metaphors. ...Metaphors enrich life, making it more vivid."
"We may speak loosely of a ‘sense of time,’ but there is no such sensory organ. Time is something we experience and construct. Time is experienced--is felt--when we wait, expect, or hope."
"To forgive is to erase a past, depriving it of its power to stain the present."
"We have no trouble naming the basic physical needs of food, shelter, and sex, nor the basic social needs of care, respect, and love. Can there also be a spiritual need that goes beyond even love as it is commonly understood to something for which the words that most readily come to mind are goodness, the Good, or God? Absent food, shelter, and sex, we die. Absent care, respect, and love, we live--barely. Absent that deep and insatiable spiritual yearning for the Good that certain stories and fables prefigure? We live, and indeed we may live well, in full, societal approbation and self-congratulatory glow, except, perhaps, in those uncanny moments--the sudden chill in the air, a pinched feeling in the heart, or even a stumble over the curb that reminds us of the abyss beneath the pavement on which we so unconcernedly walk."
"People who have ‘music’ in their souls are fun to be with."
"If each person can achieve greatness, so can each fall into baseness."
"Experience takes time and calls for patience."
"We think of the house as home and place, but enchanted images of the past are evoked not so much by the entire building, which can only be seen, as by its components and furnishings, which can be touched and smelled as well: the attic and the cellar, the fireplace and the bay window, the hidden corners, a stool, a gilded mirror, a chipped shelf."
"The world feels spacious and friendly when it accommodates our desires, and cramped when it frustrates them."
"Freedom implies space; it means having the power and enough room in which to act."
"The word routine suggests the humdrum and the inconsequential; however, unlike the routines of workplace and office, those of home are not inconsequential for they're dictated by the cyclical requirements of biological life."
"Jacques Bertin's books Semiology of Graphics and Graphics and Graphic Information Processing have been stimuli for my own thinking about the representation and analysis of geographic information. I have also used both books as core readings for graduate seminars and they have generated lively discussion and prompted innovative research. I often ask graduate students to consider how cartographic research and practice in the U.S. might be different today if the English edition of Semiology of Graphics had appeared in 1967 (when it was published in French), rather than in 1983. I know that my own work would have been dramatically different if I had encountered these ideas a decade and a half sooner."
"The fact that map is a fuzzy and radial, rather than a precisely defined, category is important because what a viewer interprets a display to be will influence her expectations about the display and how she interacts with it."
"The representational nature of maps, however, is often ignored – what we see when looking at a map is not the word, but an abstract representation that we find convenient to use in place of the world. When we build these abstract representations we are not revealing knowledge as much as are creating it."
"Understanding how maps work and why maps work (or do not work) as representations in their own right and as prompts to further representations, and what it means for a map to work, are critical issues as we embark on a visual information age."
"Cartography is about representation. This statement may seem obvious, but it has been overlooked in our search for organizing principles for the field. Rather than restricting research in cartography to maps that present well-defined messages (and suggesting a single, map-engineering approach to improving the transmission of these messages, as the communication approach did), attention to maps as spatial representation expands the field."
"Exploring maps as representation forges important links between cartography and a variety of cognate fields concerned with this topic in its various facets (including geographical information systems [GIs] and remote sensing, as well as art, cognitive science, sociology, cognitive and environmental psychology, semiotics, and even the history and philosophy of science)."
"Two developments of the past four decades played crucial roles in establishing a research agenda for the study of map symbolization and design. The first was Arthur H. Robinson's dissertation (published as The Look of Maps in 1952), with its call for objective research, and the second was the adoption in the 1970s of a paradigm of cartography as communication science."
"Robinson (1952) pointed out some limits to approaching map symbolization and design from a purely artistic viewpoint, as he suggested was the guiding perspective at the time. Maps, like buildings that are designed primarily for artistic impact, are often not functional... Robinson (1952) argued that treating maps as art can lead to "arbitrary and capricious" decisions. He saw only two alternatives: either standardize everything so that no confusion can result about the meaning of symbols, or study and analyze characteristics of perception as they apply to maps so that symbolization and design decisions can be based on "objective" rules... Robinson's dissertation, then, signaled the beginning of a more objective approach to map symbolization and design based on testing the effectiveness of alternatives, an approach that followed the positivist model of physical science. In his dissertation, Robinson cited several aspects of cartographic method for which he felt more objective guidelines were required (e.g., lettering, color, and map design). He also suggested that this objective look at cartographic methods should begin by considering the limitations of human perception. One goal he proposed was identification of the "least practical differences" in map symbols (e.g., the smallest difference in lettering size that would be noticeable to most readers)."
"Treating cartography as a formal communication system implies that we can improve map communication if we can reduce the filtering or loss of information at various points in the system where in the system should have a positive effect, and an information loss should be impossible to overcome. Most efforts to study cartographic communication have been directed to the middle stages in the system: the cartographer's transformation of selected information into the map and the initial extraction of information from the map by the user."
"During the 1960s and 1970s, when cartographers were embracing the communication model and a behavioral approach to empirical research, psychology was undergoing a revolution in its perspective on what to study and how to study it. Psychologists began to realize that stimulus-response laws do not explain human perception or behavior (any more than the gravity models used by geographers can explain spatial interaction)."
"A new view of the role of art and science in cartography is clearly needed. It is probably a mistake to view maps as objects that contain varied amounts of scientific or artistic content for which we must determine an appropriate balance (as both Keates, 1984, and Robinson, 1952, seem to, with Keates arguing for more art and Robinson for more science). Instead, it makes more sense to consider complementary artistic and scientific approaches to studying and improving maps, both of which can be applied to any given cartographic problem. The artistic approach is intuitive and holistic, achieving improvements through experience supplemented by critical examination (where critical examination implies expert appraisal of the results of our cartographic decision-making efforts). It draws on science in using perspective, understanding of human vision, color theory, and so on."
"Without categorization, maps would not be possible."
"To make maps that work, we must depict categories using methods that match the structures of human mental categorization."
"It may be that the human brain not only perceives but stores the essentials of a visual scene using the same geometrical, quasi-symbolic, minimalist vocabulary found in maps."
"According to Charles W. Morris, syntactics is the relation between a given sign-vehicle and other sign-vehicles. There is a critical distinction here (that many cartographers have missed) between Morris's "syntactics" and the linguistic subcategory of "syntax". While syntax puts emphasis on word order and parsing (i.e., on a linear sequence), syntactics is much broader in scope. Syntactics allows for any kind of among-sign relationships. Morris (1938, p. 16) makes this point explicitly in his statement that there are "syntactical problems in the fields of perceptual signs, aesthetic signs, the practical use of signs, and general linguistics."... At least three kinds of sign relationships seem to fall under Morris's umbrella of syntactics (Posner, 1985, in French; cited in Nöth, 1990, p. 51). These include: (1) ”the consideration of signs and sign combinations so far as they are subject of syntactical rules” (Morris, 1938, p. 14), (2) ”the way in which signs of various classes are combined to form compound signs” (Morris, 1946/1971, p. 367), and (3) ”the formal relations of signs to one another” (Morris, 1938, p. 6)."
"When visualization tools act as a catalyst to early visual thinking about a relatively unexplored problem, neither the semantics nor the pragmatics of map signs is a dominant factor. On the other hand, syntactics (or how the sign-vehicles, through variation in the visual variables used to construct them, relate logically to one another) are of critical importance."
"Maps, due to their melding of scientific and artistic approaches, always involve complex interaction between the denotative and the connotative meanings of signs they contain."
"The nature of maps and of their use in science and society is in the midst of remarkable change - change that is stimulated by a combination of new scientific and societal needs for geo-referenced information and rapidly evolving technologies that can provide that information in innovative ways. A key issue at the heart of this change is the concept of "visualization.""
"Cartography as a discipline has a significant stake in the evolving role of maps within systems for scientific visualization, within spatial decision support systems, within hypermedia information access systems, and within virtual reality environments."
"Use of the term visualization in the cartographic literature can be traced back at least four decades (Philbrick, 1953). It was the 1987 publication of a report by the U. S. National Science Foundation, however, that established a new meaning for this term in the context of scientific research (McCormick et al., 1987). The report, produced by a committee containing no cartographers, emphasized the role of computer display technology in prompting mental visualization - and subsequent insight. Scientific visualization has, thus, been defined as the use of sophisticated computing technology to create visual displays, the goal of which is to facilitate thinking and problem solving. Emphasis is not on storing knowledge but on knowledge construction."
"Geovisualization integrates approaches from visualization in scientific computing (ViSC), cartography, image analysis, information visualization, exploratory data analysis (EDA), and geographic information systems (GISystems) to provide theory, methods, and tools for visual exploration, analysis, synthesis, and presentation of geospatial data (any data having geospatial referencing)."
"Maps have been a successful form of representation for centuries by making the world understandable through systematic abstraction that retains the iconicity of space depicting space. Advances in methods and technologies are blurring the lines among maps and other forms of visual representation and pushing the bounds of “map” as a concept toward both more realistic and more abstract depiction. As a result, there are a variety of unanswered questions about the attributes and implications of “maps.”"
"Many pressing problems facing science and society are inherently geospatial – location matters. The availability of essential geospatial data has increased dramatically over the past decade. Both scientific progress and application of geospatial information to societal needs remains hampered, however, due to the lack of methods for transforming these data into information and for combining information from diverse sources to construct knowledge. Progress requires fundamental breakthroughs in both geovisualization and its integration with other methods for geospatial knowledge construction. The research agenda delineated in this issue is a step toward achieving these breakthroughs. Identifying the challenges is the easy part. Meeting them is unlikely without a commitment to a coordinated approach, by both individuals and organizations in multiple countries."
"There are few results of man's activities that so closely parallel man's interests and intellectual capabilities as the map."
"The author took the only course in cartography available to him in 1937; it must have been fairly typical of the few being offered in America: lectures based largely on personal experiences were supplemented by a relatively few assigned readings, and by Deetz and Adam’s Elements of Map Projection. No textbook was used because there was none in English."
"I started with a kind of artistic approach... I visualized the best-looking shapes and sizes. I worked with the variables until it got to the point where, if I changed one of them, it didn't get any better... [only then I] figure out the mathematical formula to produce that effect."
"Take an orange and draw something on it -- say, a human face. Now carefully remove the peel, trying to keep it in one piece, and flatten it against your kitchen table. You'll see that in making a two-dimensional object out of a round one, something has to give. Either the face gets distorted and looks all 'mushed out,' or in flattening the peel, it breaks into segments, dividing the face as well into several parts. A cartographer chooses between a series of those kind of lesser-of-two-evils alternatives."
"Happiest day of my life, was when the Defense Department took down its Mercator... I started learning how to make maps while on an Army payroll. So getting to see mine in the Pentagon, flanked by generals, is a little like being a prophet who is finally honored by his hometown."
"I decided there ought to be another way of balancing out the various distortions without doing it mathematically."
"While doing illustrative work for Roderick Peattie, from him I learned the value of the unorthodox."
"Our experience in the Cartographic Section of the [OSS Map] Division clearly showed that the creation of a special purpose map was frequently as much a problem in design as it was a problem in substantive compilation."
"The development of design principles based on objective visual tests, experience, and logic; the pursuit of research in the physiological and psychological effects of color; and investigations in perceptibility and readability in typography are being carried on in other fields... such a movement in cartography cannot fail to materialize"
"If we then make the obvious assumption that the content of a map is appropriate to its purpose, there yet remains the equally significant evaluation of the visual methods employed to convey that content."
"The assumption that effective cartographic technique and its evaluation is based in part on some subjective artistic or aesthetic sense on the part of the cartographer and map reader is somewhat disconcerting. For example, E. Raisz claims that the “effective use of lines or colors requires artistic judgment,” and J.K. Wright explains that the suitability of a symbol “depends on the map maker's taste and sense of harmony.” Throughout the literature there are numerous similar assertions regarding the assumed subjective aesthetic and artistic content of cartography."
"There is also a considerable tendency to define the subject as a kind of meeting place of science and art. This is exemplified by Eckert. He pleads for artistic imagination and intuition in cartographic portrayal and claims that the inter-action of such talents with scientific geography produces the aesthetic map. There is no question about the importance of imagination and new ideas, but it is equally important that significant processes be objectively investigated, whether it be the visual consumption of a graphic technique or a process in geomorphology. It can perhaps best be approached by a comparison of the aims, techniques involved, and the results accomplished by each activity"
"Most scientific cartography is concerned with the dissemination of spatial knowledge."
"Until such time as logic and objective research concerning the relative efficiency of the various possibilities is undertaken, the cartographer can but rely on the experience and direction of the artist."
"Maps enable man to rise, so to speak, above his immediate range of vision, and contemplate the salient features of larger areas."
"Today most maps are printed by lithography."
"The design process involves a series of operations. In map design, it is convenient to break this sequence into three stages. In the first stage, you draw heavily on imagination and creativity. You think of various graphic possibilities, consider alternative ways..."
"Good design looks right. It is simple (clear and uncomplicated). Good design is also elegant, and does not look contrived. A map should be aesthetically pleasing, thought provoking, and communicative"
"In an important sense, all cartography is an art in that it is representational and that operation always involves some degree of abstraction. Geographical reality is infinitely complex and its complete depiction is quite impossible; elements must be left out and intricacies modified as a consequence of the fundamental requirement of information reduction. All maps, therefore, are abstractions and the decisions involved in the process are artistic in the sense that many of them must be made subjectively by the cartographer."
"Two developments of the past four decades played crucial roles in establishing a research agenda for the study of map symbolization and design. The first was Arthur H. Robinson's dissertation (published as The Look of Maps in 1952), with its call for objective research... Robinson (1952) pointed out some limits to approaching map symbolization and design from a purely artistic viewpoint, as he suggested was the guiding perspective at the time. Maps, like buildings that are designed primarily for artistic impact, are often not functional... Robinson (1952) argued that treating maps as art can lead to "arbitrary and capricious" decisions. He saw only two alternatives: either standardize everything so that no confusion can result about the meaning of symbols, or study and analyze characteristics of perception as they apply to maps so that symbolization and design decisions can be based on "objective" rules... Robinson's dissertation, then, signaled the beginning of a more objective approach to map symbolization and design based on testing the effectiveness of alternatives, an approach that followed the positivist model of physical science. In his dissertation, Robinson cited several aspects of cartographic method for which he felt more objective guidelines were required (e.g., lettering, color, and map design). He also suggested that this objective look at cartographic methods should begin by considering the limitations of human perception. One goal he proposed was identification of the "least practical differences" in map symbols (e.g., the smallest difference in lettering size that would be noticeable to most readers)."
"In a career of teaching, writing and research, Dr. Robinson always found time, as mapmakers have for centuries, to look for the best possible solution to cartography's frustrating "Greenland problem." On maps drawn according to the most familiar projection, devised by Gerardus Mercator in the 16th century, Greenland appears to be about the size of South America, though it is actually no larger than Mexico. The distortion is a result of the compromises inherent in representing a sphere on a flat piece of paper. If the shapes of land masses are correct, the sizes will be distorted, and vice versa. If lower latitudes are close to reality on maps, then the polar regions will be grossly misshaped. In 1963, Dr. Robinson devised his own map projection..."
"Problems connected with political boundaries have frequently elicited the interest of geographers. In all countries with chronic or acute boundary problems the geographers are drawn into the general discussion, more or less as experts, and in some cases the professional geographer has actually been called upon to assist in the determination and demarcation of boundaries."
"Geographers and agricultural economists have become increasingly interested in recent years in studying the associations of crops and livestock in different types of agriculture, in contrast to the separate consideration of individual crops or products."
"The border position of geography between the natural and the social sciences is fairly generally recognized. Concerned primarily with differences in the different areas of the world, geography studies both natural and cultural features. In some universities, it is included among the natural sciences, in other among the social scientists. In England and America, geographers have particularly cultivated that portion of their field which leads naturally into economics, i.e. ."
"Of all territorial settlements made at the end of the World War none has been so frequently criticized as that which we call the ."
"The core study of geography is the study of places, that is the analysis of the significant differences that distinguish the various areas of the world from each other. Among the differences that are significant to this areal differentiation, one of the more obvious are differences in landforms; one of the least obvious to the eye, but nonetheless important in molding the character of areas, are the differences in their political organization. In pursuing these and other separate topics, geographers "radiate out in diverse directions" "and for various distances, toward the cores of other disciplines." As long as they realise where they are in reference to the central core, they may hope to understand each other purposes."
"The primary problem of [is] the analysis of the degree to which the diverse regions of the state constitute a unity."
"Numerous geographers writing in recent years concerning the nature and scope of their subject have described the relation of their field to other fields of science in terms of a concept said to stem from Immanuel Kant and from Alexander von Humboldt. Whatever may be the original source of the concept, its importance in the current geographic thought stems from the writing of , the German master of the methodology of geography."
"Geographers are wont to boast of their subject as a very old one, extending, even as an organized science, far back to antiquity. But often when geographers in this country discuss the nature of their subject, whether in symposia or in published articles, one has the impression that geography was founded by a group of American scholars at the beginning of the twentieth century."
"Geography is not an infant subject, born out of the womb of American geology a few decades ago, which each new generation of American students may change around at will."
"Although the roots of geography, as a field of study, reach back to Classical Antiquity... its establishment as a modern science was essentially the work of the century from 1750 to 1850. The second half of this period, the time of Humboldt and Ritter, is commonly spoken of as the "classical period" of geography."
"Science is... in the broadest sense of organized, objective knowledge."
"To be sure, the moment the study passes beyond bare description the student must leave the landscape itself, must go beneath it, even to state what its form represents — to translate the outer foliage of a forest into the forest, the outer surface of buildings into different kinds of buildings, etc.... Our interest in houses, factories, and forests cannot be confined to their surface form; only in the limited field of aesthetic geography could such a restriction be justified. Our very use of such words as house, barn, factory, office building, etc., indicates that we are primarily concerned with the internal functions within these structures, the external form is a secondary aspect which we use simply as a handy means to detect the internal function - and should use only insofar as it is a reliable means for that purpose."
"Landscape - the external surface of the earth beneath the atmosphere... is merely an outward manifestation of most of the factors at work in the area."
"So important, indeed, is the use of maps in geographic work, that, without wishing to propose any new law, it seems fair to suggest to the geographer a ready rule of thumb to test the geographic quality of any study he is making: if his problem cannot be studied fundamentally by maps - usually by a comparison of several maps - then it is questionable whether or not it is within the field of geography."
"The unique purpose of geography is to seek comprehension of the variable character of areas in terms of all the interrelated features which together form that variable character."
"Geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface."
"Geography is that discipline that seeks to describe and interpret the variable character from place to place of the earth as the world of man."
"We may once again modify our statement of the purpose of geography to read: the study that seeks to provide scientific description of the earth as the world of man."
"Richard Hartshorne (1899-1992) [is] an American geographer who perhaps more than any other geographer is associated with the regionalist perspective. Not that Hartshorne was the first to conceive of regionalism, but he systematically codified it, and provided an intellectually rigorous justification. In so doing he gave economic geography a critical role."
"The facts of location do not change. The significant of such facts changes with every shift in the means of communication, in routes of communication, in the technique of war, and in the centers of world power, and the full meaning of a given location can be obtained only by considering the specific area in relations to two systems of reference: a geographic system of reference from which we derive the facts of location, and a historical system of reference by which we evaluate those facts."
"Geography is the most fundamental factor in foreign policy because it is the most permanent."
"Plans for far-reaching changes in the character of international society are an intellectual by-product of all great wars."
"There are not many instances in history which show great and powerful states creating alliances and organizations to limit their own strength. States are always engaged in curbing the force of some other state. The truth of the matter is that states are interested only in a balance which is in their favor. Not an equilibrium, but a generous margin is their objective. There is no real security in being just as strong as a potential enemy; there is security only in being a little stronger. There is no possibility of action if one's strength is fully checked; there is a chance for a positive foreign policy only if there is a margin of force which can be freely used. Whatever the theory and rationalization, the practical objective is the constant improvement of the state's own relative power position. The balance desired is the one which neutralizes other states, leaving the home state free to be the deciding force and the deciding voice."
"[A] political equilibrium is neither a gift of the gods nor an inherently stable condition. It results from the active intervention of man, from the operation of political forces. States cannot afford to wait passively for the happy time when a miraculously achieved balance of power will bring peace and security. If they wish to survive, they must be willing to go to war to preserve a balance against the growing hegemonic power of the period."
"Nations which renounce the power struggle and deliberately choose impotence will cease to influence international relations either for evil or good."
"I think that it’s very helpful that I was 30 when I started my PhD. I took time to do other things between high school and college, and college and my masters, and masters and my PhD. So it meant that when my initial committee said no, I thought, "Well, you’re not the boss of me. I’m here for my own intellectual path, and I’m going to figure out how to do what I want to do." I don’t think I would have had the confidence to do that at age 21—speaking just about myself at 21."
"The first thing I tell students is that geography is the field that has the most intellectual freedom of any part of the academy. To me the beautiful part about geography is that you have no excuse for ever being bored. Every week, when you go into colloquium, you’re hearing about something totally different and outside of the normal academic arena that you’re used to, and I love that about geography."
"The conceptualization of a map as a data-storage medium leads directly to the concept of it as a computer input element."
"It seems that some basic tasks, common to all cartography, may in the future be largely automated, and that the volume of maps produced in a given time will be increased while the cost is reduced."
"Science proceeds by detecting structures embedded in observational data. It is no simple matter to separate these general structures from the specific details."
"Maps are generalized representations since it is clearly impossible to display reality in all its complexity at a reduced scale. Not too surprisingly, map makers are unable to provide explicit abstract statements about the process of map generalization, but some empirical evidence suggests constancy of information content per map centimeter squared, regardless of map scale."
"I invoke the first law of geography: everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things"
"Philosophically, the phenomenon external to an area of interest affects what goes on in the inside; a sufficiently common occurrence as to warrant being called the second law of geography."
"Soldiers have medals, scholars have publications."
"Tobler’s first major achievement was the transformation of geographical cartography from a field basically concerned with visualization to one where graphical methods could be recast as mathematical operations, and where computers began to be accepted as essential tools for the map-maker."
"Waldo Tobler was a genius. Very few people are, far fewer than the normal proportions banded around, but Waldo was one. He appeared to greatly dislike being singled out in this way, but now he is dead it has to be said."
"The academic contributions of Waldo Tobler are noteworthy and significant, spanning essentially all disciplines that involve the study of geographic phenomena."
"Dr. Tobler’s contribution to the field of Geographic Information Systems cannot be overstated–in fact, some would say that he is one of the most influential geographers in the last century."
"There is no longer any need to preach for aerial photography-not in the United States- for so widespread has become its use and so great its value that even the farmer who plants his fields in a remote corner of the country knows its value."
"I have made no secret that I am stepping down principally because of a strong disagreement with those now in control of ACSM over the importance to the profession of federal personnel qualifications standards which recognize the value of a comprehensive cartographic education to those accepting the title and responsibilities of Cartographer. But I have few regrets for having worked with The American Cartographer since 1977...."
"Publication of my commentary in the Communications from Readers section might be one way for The American Cartographer to affirm a commitment to openness, and to demonstrate once again that efforts to stifle dissenting opinion tend to backfire."
"Although cartographic journals have been rigorously reviewing software for nearly a decade, the profession today seems as powerless against stupidly designed software as it was against the flagrant misuse of the Mercator projection."
"Whenever a map of count data makes sense, perhaps to place a map of rates in perspective, graphic theory condemns using a choropleth map because its ink (or toner) metaphor is misleading."
"Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it is essential. To portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or screen, a map must distort reality."
"No one can use maps or make maps safely and effectively without understanding map scales, map projections, and map symbols."
"Such a critique seems trivial insofar as it's the situation that makes a technology good or bad. Plumbing is good when it solves an otherwise messy public health problem, for instance, and bad when it facilitates Nazi gas chambers. Of course, we need to critique the use of geospatial technologies. And we also need to critique the critique of geospatial technology."
"Nowadays, when I confess to being skeptical about theory, I'm especially concerned that proponents of social criticism of cartography don't really seem to be very committed to communication. They litter their essays with elitist language, which I don't think takes anybody, except maybe them, further down the road toward understanding."
"Has cartography become GIS? It's a moot point. I guess a lot of people in the GIS arena wouldn't agree that what they are doing is cartography. There's also the annoying tendency among academics to rename things, as occurred when we went from geographic information systems to geographic information science, to geospatial technologies, a term that acknowledges that the important role of GPS and what's called `location-based services'. If you look beyond GIS, you'll see a wider enterprise in which GIS as we know it now (mostly buffering and map overlay) is a relatively small part of macrocartography. But I don't have a crystal ball."
"“A final caveat: because this book is intended for general readers, academic geographers will notice little reference here to poststructural critical theorists, who’ve said much about maps in recent years but little about toponyms. Simply put, I’ve not found their work particularly useful, especially when tedious regurgitation of Foucault crowds out case studies and fosters gratuitous assumptions about power and impact.”"
"Cartographic expertise allows you to communicate geographic information clearly with maps. Amateur-looking maps can undermine your audience's ability to understand important information and weaken the presentation of a professional data investigation."
"When choosing map colors, you should not be overly concerned about which colors your audience likes. Everyone has an opinion about color aesthetics, and members of your audience undoubtedly have differing opinions based on their own preferences. There has been a substantial amount of loosely structured research on color preferences. Regardless of context, it seems that most people like blue and do not like yellow, but that is an overly simplistic guideline for multicolor contexts. People also like maps with many colors, so focus your attention on presenting your data clearly and not worry about whether you have picked everyone's favorite colors."
"The old saw that history is the study of when, geography the study of where, has some truth to it, at least as the two fields have been taught at most colleges and universities in North America."
"Using GIS intelligently requires a grounding in geographical knowledge. Applying the technology to history requires knowing how to contextualize and interpret historical sources."
"The form of information in GIS can seem quite alien to humanists upon first encounter."
"The most exciting thing about historical GIS is often the "eureka" moment when someone sees data mapped for the first time."
"Whether one works with texts, historical maps, or any other kind of source, cultivating a spatial and visual imagination makes it easier to recognize the place-based information and spatial relationships embedded in historical evidence."
"Yes raster is faster, but raster is vaster, and vector just seems more correcter."
"No matter what the topic, you can find a literature on it"
"if you cannot prove it, you do not know it’s true."
"Geography is a science, but it is also an art, because understanding the meaning of area cannot be reduced to a formal process. The highest form of the geographer's art is producing good regional geography- evocative descriptions that facilitate an understanding and an appreciation of places, areas, and regions."
"War II and unsettled postwar conditions have wrought revolutionary changes in mapping activities. An increasing number and variety of maps are now being produced for service men and civilians. New uses for existing maps are being found and rapid technological advances necessitate the development of new and unique types of maps."
"It is almost impossible to discuss cartographic training with any practicing cartographer or employer of cartographers without being overwhelmed by a spontaneous outburst of complaints."
"Too many employers of cartographers have reacted to the academic stress on theory by overrating experience. Experience is invaluable, especially in mapping technology, but in practice it is almost always limited to one type of map problem and the production techniques involve."
"Poor cartographic training has resulted in poor maps, but the average American, unable to discriminate between good and bad maps, has brought no pressure to bear on producers of poor maps."
"Instructors in cartography must accept their obligation to students in other disciplines."
"Although the size and frequency of human error in digital data files can be quite startling, recent research has shown that substantial improvement in accuracy can be attained."
"In the rush to implement a new computer mapping technology, cartographers and geographers have paid too little attention to their own logical, physiological, and psychological frailties."
"There are two particularly bothersome problems in treating geography as a science. The first problem is concerned with the role of description in geography and the second with the predictability of geographic phenomena."
"Some take the position that description is non-scientific. This position cannot stand."
"The question of predictability is crucial since it is the basic assumption of all theory. The predictability of geographic phenomena depends in turn on the answer to a question: Are geographic phenomena unique or general? If they are unique, they are not predictable and theory cannot be constructed. If they are general, they are predictable and theory can be constructed."
"Science is diametrically opposed to the doctrine of uniqueness. It is willing to sacrifice the extreme accuracy obtainable under the uniqueness point of view in order to gain the efficencies of generalization."
"In order to produce aerial classifications of identical sort no matter what differentiating characteristics are considered, it is necessary that there exist a perfect aerial correlation between all phenomena of human significance. This condition is not met on the earth's surface."
"As an alternative attempt to preserve the region as a concrete unit object, it is possible, but absurd, to insist on some one arbitrary areal classification as sacred and immutable."
"Unlike most other phrases of cartography, metacartography is not directly concerned with the preparation of maps or their psychological impact; rather metacartogrpahy attempts to stand back from the subject to see how maps perform as a device in portraying spatial properties in competition with other devices, such as photogrpahs, pictures, graphs, language, and mathematics."
"I threw myself into the peace movement when it was supported at that time by less than four percent of the American people. Having lived through McCarthyism, I fully expected to be in a concentration camp within a year. (Instead I was forced into exile in five.)"
"I am short tempered with academic geographers, even Marxist ones. The campus geographers tend to separate theory from practice. They read too much and look and, often, struggle not at all. They cite, not sight. In the heady atmosphere of all theory and no practice all sorts of objections are raised to our work, but the one that is most fearful is an ideological Marxist reductionism. In science the methodology does not endorse itself. Only the substance recommends the methodology. Theory requires experiment. If the substantive work is good, then ask the scientist his methods. But in religion that is all backwards. The methodology becomes everything. Dogma is never put to a test. Perhaps citations of past masters, who did in fact deal with the real world, is permitted, but mostly a convolution, and an embroidery develops in dogmatic Marxism. Heady nonsense spins off. Dogmatic Marxists are as out of place as Christian Scientists. Marxism is ascience relating theory to experimental practice, but the followers of Marx, typically those who have never organized a union or a community, never put out a leaflet, never mobilized a demonstration, but who have buttressed themselves with tons of books, announce their purity. They are a pain in the gluteus Maximus and often delude good people because of the fanaticism of their opinions."
"They will say that there is bourgeois geography and proletariat geography. True enough. And there is no other. False! There is the geography both sides agree upon. Do the bourgeois geographers insist that the earth is round? Certainly. Then should the proletariat geographers insist it is flat? Certainly not."
"Another aspect of my perspective on Theoretical Geography is the constant attempt to discredit my work by discussion of my personality, which, contrary to my detractors, is innately cheerful and outgoing as evidenced by my popularity with most of my driving taxi cab."
"I am a scientist. That is enough. I do not make value judgments in my work or worry about ethics or doing right (or wrong). I simply do science, geography."
"So what is the state of geography today? It is in a mess – hyphenated, obfuscated, as confused as it is confusing. Why? Society is itself degenerating. The culture is coarse, vulgar, prostituted, chaotic, ‘dummied down’. We are in desperate need of intellectual reinforcements, and geography can help some."
"Wealth and titles, which were sure to be heaped on the hero or heroine of the tale at last, she considered as the ultimatum of all sublunary good."
"... she had on a blue bonnet, and with a pair of lovely eyes of the same color, has contrived to make me feel devilish odd about the heart."
"The mind of youth eagerly catches at promised pleasure: pure and innocent by nature, it thinks not of the dangers lurking beneath those pleasures, till too late to avoid them."
"Oh my dear girls, for to such only am I writing, listen not to the voice of love, unless sanctioned by paternal approbation; be assured it is now past the days of romance."
"Of all the pleasures of which the human mind is sensible, there is none equal to that which warms and expands the bosom, when listening to commendations bestowed on us by a beloved object, and are conscious of having deserved them."
"Pleasure is a vain illusion; she draws you on to a thousand follies, errors, and I may say vices, and then leaves you to deplore your thoughtless credulity."
"The very basis of true peace of mind is a benevolent wish to see all the world as happy as one's Self; and from my soul do I pity the selfish churl, who, remembering the little bickerings of anger, envy, and fifty other disagreeables to which frail mortality is subject, would wish to revenge the affront which pride whispers him he has received."
"... my boys, with only moderate incomes, when placed in the church, at the bar, or in the field, may exert their talents, make themselves friends, and raise their fortunes on the basis of merit."
"... while discretion points out the impropriety of my conduct, inclination urges me on to ruin."
"... the heart that is truly virtuous is ever inclined to pity and forgive the errors of its fellow creatures."
"Quantitative geographers do not often concern themselves with philosophy, and although externally we are often labeled (incorrectly in many cases) as positivists, such a label has little or zero impact on the way in which we prosecute research. We do not, for example, concern ourselves with whether our intended research strategy breaches some tenet of positivist philosophy. Indeed, most of us would have scant knowledge of what such tenets are. As Barnes (2001) observes, for many of us, our first experience with positivism occurs when it is directed at us as a form of criticism."
"Map-makng is very old, and has been practised by the most primitive peoples for many ages. Rude scratches on many rocks in South America are now interpreted as maps. East Greenland natives carve maps out of wood; American Indians make map-sketches on birch and other barks; the Marshall Islanders charted the sailing routes along their coasts long before they knew of the white man; the desert nomad sketches maps in the sand to illustrate his wanderings, and nearly every primitive tribe to-day makes maps to show routes to hunting-grounds, animal paths, fisheries, fords, etc. They know as well as we do that maps are practically a human necessity; but we know further that a good map often places before our eyes an amount of accurate geographical information that might take many months to dig out of books."
"Though many of our geographers give most attention to special phases of their study, there is a common ground upon which all should stand. The geographical needs of America are great. Most of our teachers are so deficient in knowledge of the subject that our general educational standards are low. Geography, on the whole, occupies a low plane. We know of no way to improve these conditions in which the efforts and influence of the working geographers shall not be paramount. This is a duty that our geographers owe to their study; and there is nothing that will bring them into closer touch, that will make their united influence in such Associations as ours more effective, than to work together, not as experts in this or that department of the study, but as geographers, pure and simple, who have a common interest in the improvement of geographical conditions and who desire and expect to participate in the promotion of all approved measures designed to bring about better conditions."
"The ultimate goal of my research is to improve our knowledge of how changes in climate and land-use will affect forest ecosystems and water resources."
"I investigate how forest processes affect water flow dynamics and pathways in soil and streams, and conversely, how water flow paths affect ecological function in mountainous areas. This bridging of hydrology and ecosystem science is key to developing sustainable management of water resources."
"All of my research involves a combination of field experimentation, field observations and laboratory analysis, and is fundamentally interdisciplinary and collaborative."
"Over my career, I have collaborated with dozens of excellent scientists from a variety of disciplines to conduct research projects that have achieved far more than any of us could have on our own."
"Man is a product of the earth’s surface. This means not merely that he is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given him his problems of navigation or irrigation, and at the same time whispered hints for their solution"
"An important characteristic of plains is their power to facilitate every phase of historical movement; that of mountains is their power to retard, arrest, or deflect it. Man, as part of the mobile envelope of the earth, like air and water feels always the pull of gravity."
"The Corn Belt is a gift of the gods—the rain god, the sun god, the ice god and the gods of geology. In the middle of the North American continent the gods of geology made a wide expanse of land where the rock layers are nearly horizontal. The ice gods leveled the surface with their glaciers, making it ready for the plow, and also making it rich. The rain god gives summer showers. The sun god gives summer heat. All this is nature's conspiracy to make man grow corn. Having corn, man feeds it to cattle and hogs, and thereby becomes a producer of meat."