A Philosophical Framework Applied to Cartography

Abstract

In this chapter we want to refer to one of the most prominent philosophers: Immanuel Kant. In a cartographic context his contributions to the field of geography and the concepts of space and time are very important. For Kant, space as well as time are only “a priori” concepts to understand phenomena, similar to intuition. Kant postulates that space and time are not real, but only a sensible projection of the sense of symmetry of our own corporality and of our own sense of change with the objective to put all phenomena into an order. Further, two great philosophers of logical positivism are analysed: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. We are going to ask how cartography grasps epistemological aspects of knowledge construction. Neither Wittgenstein nor Popper wrote explicitly about cartography and mapping, but their legacy has an important impact on our understanding of maps. The evolution of contemporary cartography from an epistemological point of view can be considered to be equivalent to Wittgenstein’s trajectory (his First and Second Philosophy). On the other hand, cartographic products and the different stages of map creation can be linked to Popper’s Three World Theory.