Mapping

This session will focus on the use of maps and the practices of scientific mapping by different social groups and cultures over different periods of time. Discussions of eighteenth-century planetary mapping, nineteenth-century terrestrial and botanical mapping, and early twentieth-century climatological mapping will present a variety of approaches towards the representation of natural phenomena in space. The papers collectively will form a comparative approach to mapping, by exploring different attitudes towards a seemingly ubiquitous practice. Maps have often been regarded as embodiments of power that could be transferred to the possessor, or as the means by which to shape the way in which scientific knowledge was generated, transmitted, and understood. However, the papers will show that mapping was not always an obvious way to represent or manipulate knowledge, nor did it unambiguously confer authority on its practitioners. By exploring the use of maps in different scientific disciplines and periods, the waxing and waning of the power and value of maps, and the skills of their producers and owners, this session aims to open up a discussion of the historicity of mapping as a scientific practice.