Cognition In Cartography

All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. These ideas are related to certain fundamental issues in map reading and map percep tion that I should like to consider under the broad title, Cognition in Cartography. A considerable amount of perceptual research within the general framework of behavioral psychology has been conducted by cartographers during the last ten or fifteen years. However, as one reviews the findings of this research in connection with problems encountered during the normal process of making maps, it doesn't seem to add up to much. No whole theory or set of principles, greater than the sum of the small component parts, has emerged. Similarly, analytical attempts to deal with the notion of map reading have not led to any theoretical structures from which principles that would assist in the details of map design can be deduced. Clearly, map reading is more than just the cumulation of a number of simple perceptual com parisons of symbol size or value. Perhaps it is time, in recognition of this fact,