"Exploring maps as representation forges important links between cartography and a variety of cognate fields concerned with this topic in its various facets (including geographical information systems [GIs] and remote sensing, as well as art, cognitive science, sociology, cognitive and environmental psychology, semiotics, and even the history and philosophy of science)."
Alan M. MacEachren is an American geographer, Professor of Geography and Director, GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University. He is known for his cross-disciplinary work in the fields of human-centered geographic visualization, scientific and information visualization, and in statistics.
"Cartography is about representation. This statement may seem obvious, but it has been overlooked in our search for organizing principles for the field. Rather than restricting research in cartography to maps that present well-defined messages (and suggesting a single, map-engineering approach to improving the transmission of these messages, as the communication approach did), attention to maps as spatial representation expands the field."
"Two developments of the past four decades played crucial roles in establishing a research agenda for the study of map symbolization and design. The first was Arthur H. Robinsons dissertation (published as The Look of Maps in 1952), with its call for objective research, and the second was the adoption in the 1970s of a paradigm of cartography as communication science."
"The fact that map is a fuzzy and radial, rather than a precisely defined, category is important because what a viewer interprets a display to be will influence her expectations about the display and how she interacts with it."
"Without categorization, maps would not be possible."
"During the 1960s and 1970s, when cartographers were embracing the communication model and a behavioral approach to empirical research, psychology was undergoing a revolution in its perspective on what to study and how to study it. Psychologists began to realize that stimulus-response laws do not explain human perception or behavior (any more than the gravity models used by geographers can explain spatial interaction)."
"Treating cartography as a formal communication system implies that we can improve map communication if we can reduce the filtering or loss of information at various points in the system where in the system should have a positive effect, and an information loss should be impossible to overcome. Most efforts to study cartographic communication have been directed to the middle stages in the system: the cartographers transformation of selected information into the map and the initial extraction of information from the map by the user."