What Was a Map? The Lexicographers Reply

TLDR

The paper notes that definitions of “map” have been debated philosophically, with most treating maps as earth‑surface representations, yet many writers find this too general, and alternative definitions reflect shifting intellectual fashions across scientific, popular, professional, and philosophical contexts. The authors compiled a corpus of over 300 definitions of “map” from dictionaries, encyclopedias, geographical texts, and other writings spanning the mid‑seventeenth century to today. The analysis shows that the collected definitions warrant statistical and historical examination, and the authors provide several illustrative examples.

Abstract

Definitions of the word "map" are often discussed in a philosophical spirit, but they have not been previously used as a way of throwing light on cartographic history. In this study, a sample of more than three hundred such definitions has been collected from dictionaries, encyclopedias, geographical texts, and other writings of various dates from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. The results clearly deserve statistical and historical analysis, and several examples of such analysis are offered for consideration. The most common lexicographical approach is to treat maps as representations of the surface of the earth, but for many writers this simple formula has been too general and too crude. Of the alternative definitions, few seem conformable to common usage. Instead, they reflect changing intellectual fashions among geographers and, in more recent times, cartographers. In these cases where greater lexicographical refinement is attempted, a number of motifs can be seen to emerge, those chosen for discussion being, in historical order, scientific, popular, professional, and philosophical.