Conceptmapping Thesis: Chapter 2, part 10. Projection onto a representation space
2.10Projection onto a representation space
What is included on a map is the choice of the map-maker. Several sources [NOM, LTL] indicate that any transformation of reality into a symbolic representation is a PROJECTION. This transformation often acts as an abstraction, from a person’s particular viewpoint and indeed, may distort facts to fit into the model. An example of this is the Mercator planetary projection; this cylindrical projection of a globe is constructed by artificially increasing the separation of naturally equidistant points - the latitudes from the equator - so that it may preserve shapes. However, this process produces a distorted representation. For instance, Greenland is shown with enormously exaggerated size although its shape is preserved, whereas the countries around the equator are shown much diminished and the poles cannot be shown at all. Hence this type of projection gives an incorrect impression of the relative sizes of the world’s continents.
The transformation which facts undergo when they are rendered as propositions is that the relations in them are turned into something like objects.
Furthermore, the projection process involved in language includes a system which requires that names and named relations or activities be strung out side by side, in an order that may or may not have anything to do with the spatial or temporal order of the topic, concepts or other things discussed. Langer calls this property of verbal symbolism “discursiveness,” and “by reason of it, only thoughts that can be arranged in this particular order can be spoken at all; any idea which does not lend itself to this ‘projection’ is ineffable, incommunicable by means of words.”
visual forms are not discursive. They do not present their constituents successively, but simultaneously.
- [NOM]
A word-based description is usually enough to mentally recreate the ideas if those ideas were the reader’s head in the first place; the re-reading process serving to deepen the pathways of associations in the mind. If however, the text was the result of note-taking from another source, such as a lecturer, then they are likely to be hurried and to be mere glimpses of what was considered important at the time. This is often inadequate because what is written is influenced by what the student already does or does not know. Even if the notes are taken from a text book, the nature of the interlinked concepts can be more important than the rote facts. In whatever way the text expresses the relationships, the representation does not have a structure that mimics the network of relationships between components in the subject matter.
Mind Mapping[1] is a note-taking and note-making technique in which ideas are represented graphically. A focal idea, the subject matter, is illustrated at the centre of the page, and around this are drawn related ideas with the most important related concepts shown on the arcs outwards on the first level and then successively, items of further interest.
Plate 1 shows a Mind Map from the Mind Map Book; by Lorraine Gill on the nature of creativity and the perspective of the artist; it begins to illustrate the freeform tendencies of Mind Mapping, this map is much less freeform than many others featured in this and other books. Achieving the same artistic feel in software could be difficult.
[1] the term ‘Mind Mapping’ is a trademark copyright of the Buzan Centre. Books on Mind Mapping and other techniques promoted by Tony Buzan are published world-wide by BBC Books.