Maps and the Epistemic Risks of Visual Representation

Abstract

Bad maps misrepresent and mislead. They hide important truths and misdirect our attention. Often, they are self‑serving, promoting the values of their makers. But it is not easy to delineate what counts as a good map. Even ‘good’ maps that are useful, illuminating, and accurate according to their representational conventions can still mislead us, hide important patterns, and distort our understanding. In constructing a map, we necessarily balance at least three sorts of epistemic risks, which I name aesthetic risks, categorization risks, and simplification risks. Balancing these risks is always a value‑laden process. Maps that employ an ‘aesthetics of neutrality’ can be distinctively misleading by hiding their own value‑laden perspective under an aesthetic veneer of scientific objectivity.

Keywords

• Aesthetics in Science. Epistemic Risk. Geographic Information Systems. Maps. Representational Risk