Tooling up for Complexity - Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography - page 8

this representation of the island is the very aim of the entire
expedition, namely deciding whether Sakhaline is an island
or a peninsula. The transformation of an ephemeral map in
an immutable mobile through its drawing in a notebook
enables La Pérouse to bring it back to the King and gather
evidence of its existence as an island 1 .
1.1.3. Managing complexity
Why are maps as effective as “immutable mobiles”?
Only man can really dominate: everything is too
large or too small for him, too mixed up or made
up of successive layers that conceal what he
would like to see. Yes! Yet one thing can be
dominated by his gaze: a sheet of paper laid
across a table or stuck on a wall. The history of
science and technology is mostly the result
of tricks that have brought the world onto this
piece of paper. Then the mind can see it and
dominate it. Nothing can be concealed or hidden
in the dark. [LAT 85, p.21]
In this excerpt, the map has two functions. First, it
gives a synoptic idea of an event that is too great to be
apprehended physically. Second, it embodies the effort
required to make all the elements hold on its surface: these
“tricks” Latour was referring to about the island of
Sakhaline point to methods of converting a set of information
into a map.
1 This analysis could be taken further in terms of the creation and
circulation of the map. We would mention the year-long journey
Barthélémy de Lesseps had to embark on in 1787 to bring La Pérouse's
notebook to the French Ambassador in Saint-Petersburg for it to be taken
all the way to Versailles.