The effect of the ancient Chinese philosophy and geography on our contemporary Landsape development using GIS models

Abstract

Modelling the man-made and natural environment is an essential task of those who are engaged in the design, planning or scientific research of the geographical space. In cartography or in the application of Geograpical Information Systems (GIS) the traditional geometrical modelling is based on the binary logic, which means that something is either absolutely true or absolutely false concerning a given object and a given criteria. This exclusive approach was successful only in rough, basic descriptions of the environment, but a more refined, human-scale modelling requires smoother transitions between different states—that are not necessary strictly equal to “1” or ”0”- but can be of any value in between. This continuous scaling between transitions of two opposite states can be symbolised with the ancient Chinese yin-yang principle. In our paper we show how the ancient principle of beauty and harmony can be successfully modelled with the latest GIS technology and how it could be used to highlight the areas which are of lower status concerning yin and yang properties, hence they have to be developed more intensively.