André Skupin's In Terms of Geography, which organizes the overlapping topic areas covered in contemporary critical geography using the metaphor of a topographical map.
one of the exhibitions I knew about before my New York visit, and one that I most looked forward to seeing, was Places and Spaces: Mapping Science, a physical exhibition with a more extensive online component, examining how traditional mapping techniques may be used to define the contemporary fields of science.
Today, the word "science" encompasses myriad arenas of physical and abstract inquiry. This unique exhibition, at the Healy Hall in midtown Manhattan, uses innovative mapping techniques to physically show what and where science is today, how different branches of science relate to each other and where different branches of study are heading, where cutting edge science is erupting as archipelagos in the oceans of the yet unknown - and - how it all relates back to the physical centers of research. The world of science is turned into a navigable landscape.
I was very excited but ended up disappointed.
The exhibition consisted of printed out images (even the matting was printed). No original documents. It would have been more exciting to see these images online in high resolution. Unfortunately the online component is also disappointing because the images are so small that you can't view them in any detail. It would have been better if they had spent the money they spent on printing buying more server space and putting really large, high res, detailed images up online. Then, if they had to have on site exhibitions, they could have built kiosks, or projectors. Otherwise, just distributed CD-ROMs.
This would have been more appropriate to the topic: virtual or metaphorical space. Ideal space. Something could have been made out of the exhibition being virtual and drawing the viewer's attention to the "space" they were entering and to the possibility of external linkage.
That said, the content of the exhibition is very exciting. It was well curated: a good collection of pieces illustrating an interesting idea. The exhibition was divided into: historical maps of geographic space, historical maps of ideas, and then maps of science. There was a very beautiful (but difficult to read) light installation at the end of two maps, one a more typical topical map like the others, and one that showed the geographic locations of article citations to show the geographic spread of ideas. I won't get into further detail on the maps themselves. All the exhibited maps, plus more examples, are available on their website, although you'll get a better view of the exhibited ones if you check out the physical exhibition.
I found it interesting that most of the maps seemed to operate on the principle of organizing topics according to citation importance, as determined by how often an article or study is referred to. This is also reminiscent of the internet, where hit count (quantity) is often more important than the quality of the reference. There's not much information about how this is done, so we can't know if any of these references are perhaps negative: scientists ganging up to laugh at a silly or universally repudiated idea. Maybe a work is cited because it has no influence at all. Scientists can be a clique as much as anyone else.
This traces the influence of formally ratified ideas but not of any other types of influence. It also makes the taxonomy of science entirely self-referential---even subordinating real world application to articles discussing real world application.
It would be thrilling to create a taxonomy/map of science based on topic areas and connections provided by the man in the street. Each person would create a map and then the maps would be morphed together to make a consensus idea of the world of science. Since it's all perception anyway, it wouldn't be a Fool's World Map where the makers just take a few of the most ridiculous misperceptions they can find and use those. If done scientifically (i.e. with a proper sample) this would be just as legitimate, and in some ways more so, than the maps created by the scientists themselves.
Because the most fascinating part of all this is that these maps, which create powerful consensus in how science is to be taxonomized, also create a sense that "science" is an actual physical place that can be mapped, whose contours can be revealed; that the landscape of science is somehow fixed and knowable, even though everyone provides the meaningless caveat that it is not. There is, of course, no such terrain, and science (like science fiction) will always be exactly what we mean when we point to it, and no more.
I had an argument with a friend about the legitimacy of Chinese herbalism. (He's white, male, pushing 40 and hysterical about scientism.) The faith he put into the scientific method was as astounding as the contempt he had for anything that did not employ it. The fact that, for example, a certain ointment has healed burns for a thousand years, and has been tested in a variety of ways over that time, got no traction with him. Only clinical trials (whatever those are, he couldn't say) could determine whether a medicine could truly heal.
Ultimately, as interesting as it is, what this exhibition does is help cement (or at least reveal) this magical thinking about western science as a hard physical location, a physical destination that you actually can reach, and one that renders all other such supposed destinations fantasy. Ironically, it was in thinking about this that I articulated for the first time, for myself, that "science" is rather a culturally determined set of precepts and prescriptions---and proscriptions---more like an ethical system than the final definition of reality.
The exhibition ends August 31st so get yourself down there if you're in New York. And don't forget to check out the online exhibition, which is more comprehensive.
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