Classifying, Analysing and Experiencing Maps - Advances in Cartography and GIScience - page 37

Figure 1: ”Seen”(A), ”Known”(E) and ”Imagined”(G). Three extreme cases of maps accord-
ing the origin of their contents. “Seen” refers to maps based entirely on visual observa-
tions. “Known” means maps based entirely on calculations and abstract thinking. The hu-
man “Imagination” is the only source for this map.
2.2 Classifying maps according to the relations between the three
main components
It is the basic assumption behind this paper that the contents of all maps
are the result of a specific combination of these three main factors. Every
single map has its own composition of them as decisive element. Hence all
maps can be represented by a dot in a triangle diagram.
Figure 2 shows the three previous examples as corners of a triangle-plot.
Each of them i.e. A, E and G represents all maps, based on only one single
element - maps based either on visual observations only (2A) abstractions
only (2E) and imaginations only (2G).
All points along the axes of the diagram represent maps based on a pair of
elements. All other points within the diagram's surface represent maps
based on a specific combination of the three elements.
A few examples illustrate further the idea behind the diagram.