Tendencies in Contemporary Cartography

Abstract

In the second half of twentieth century, major tendencies and perspectives arose during the formal and academic development of cartography and mapping. The analysis of theoretical trends in cartography goes back to Arthur Robinson’s Ph.D. Thesis (1955). He was, however, not the first author setting the trend of representational cartography or a representative of modern cartography asserting that maps are objective, value-free representations. Robinson himself refers to Max Eckert whose monumental work Kartenwissenschaft (Map Science, 1921–1925) has to be considerd the manifesto of a new discipline (courtesy written communication by Zsolt Török 2012). To this end, several authors and researchers have labelled these changes in the discipline with different terms: tendencies, trends, shifts, perspectives, approaches, paradigms, paradigm shifts, etc. In our book, we consider the changes to be mainly based upon the Western cartographic literature that show those characteristics that are pointed out in Thomas Kuhn’s writing about the paradigm concept (Kuhn 1970). We take into account that surreptitiously these changes include the epistemological and philosophical bases, visions, and perspectives within applied scientific contexts, methods, and technologies, and their social context.