Maps, terrain, routes, and travellers

 How do we make sense of science, God, and life? A metaphor that may be helpful is that of maps, terrain, routes, and travellers.

The terrain is the underlying reality. A map is a representation of that reality. A route is a particular path that might be taken or is taken as a traveller explores the terrain. The traveller may travel alone or with a guide or with other travellers.

Many types of maps, terrain, routes, and travellers exist. They are all dynamic, but they do not necessarily change synchronously. Different terrains change at different rates. A wilderness terrain may change little in one hundred years. In contrast, an urban landscape may become unrecognisable in one year.

Physical terrains are real and exist independently of any observer. Yet they are multi-faceted. A forest has a history, ecology, topography, and beauty. It can be viewed through lenses such as culture, aesthetics, economics, geography, or sport. 

Some terrains are not physically real. Below are maps of The Road from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City in The Pilgrim's Progress (top) and of Middle Earth from Lord of the Rings (bottom). Yet these terrains are real in the imagination of the author and reader of these classic books. These maps are useful to the reader as they journey through the book. Furthermore, The Pilgrim's Progress has been useful to many Christians on their own life journey.

For a specific terrain, there may be different classes of maps: tourist, topographic, road, GPS, or Google. The maps within a specific class may differ by scale, level of detail, or accuracy. Maps can be cast in different media: paper, electronic, verbal, or in the mind. Indigenous people may represent their land in stories that are passed down orally from one generation to the next. An example, are the songlines of Australian aboriginal cultures.

Maps can also be used to organise information and represent the relationship between different concepts, as is done in concept maps and mind maps. The latter uses a tree or radial structure suggesting a hierarchy of concepts, showing the relations of the part to the whole, often with a central concept.

All maps are wrong, but some are useful. [Here I borrow from an important aphorism from statistics and social sciences, "All models are wrong, but some are useful"]. No map perfectly represents every single detail of the terrain. The only perfect representation is the terrain itself. For a given traveller, purpose, and journey a particular map may be useful. But it may not be useful in other contexts. Some maps are so wrong they are not useful.

Any map requires interpretation. Connecting the map to the terrain and route may be easy or challenging. A traveller may need specific training to be able to locate their current position on the map and to use the map to navigate along their desired route. This may be helped by navigational tools such as a compass or the stars in the sky.

A map may help a traveller notice things they would not otherwise see. On the other hand, it may distract them from seeing other things that are not on the map.

No map is completely morally or politically neutral. Any map is drawn from a particular perspective. A map that appeared in the movie, Barbie caused a political firestorm.

Warner Bros has described a map that appears in its coming Barbie movie as a “child-like crayon drawing” with no intended meaning, after Vietnam said it would ban the film after claiming the map depicted the disputed South China Sea.

Imperialists and colonists drew maps that continue to shape global politics today.

The earth is an approximate sphere but world maps represent it as a flat sheet. The Mercator projection was developed in 1569 to aid navigation, having the significant advantage that it accurately represents local shapes and directions. However, it is wrong in that it distorts the area of objects. Those further from the equator are much larger than those closer to the equator. For example, Africa appears to be the same size as Greenland, (as can be seen below) whereas it is fourteen times larger! These distortions mean that the European colonial powers would have seen their countries as disproportionate in size. If size was interpreted as a measure of importance, colonial prejudices of self-importance would have been reinforced.

This example of the Mercator projection illustrates several important issues. Maps can be wrong, but still useful. Maps require interpretation. Different interpretations can be used for political purposes.

Routes are also subjective. Who picks it? What is the goal of the route? Travellers get lost. Some never find their way. Some routes are silly. Even the technical prowess of Google Maps can fail, sending a driver on circuitous routes.

Travellers are diverse. They might consider themselves as explorers, pilgrims, colonialists, tourists, or commuters.

Later I hope to explore in more detail how this metaphor plays out in making sense of science, God, and life. Briefly, I find it to consider the sciences and theology as maps of terrains. Experience, reason, tradition, and transcendence can be guides to help my explorations, both in constructing maps and interpreting existing ones.  

In his wonderful book, The Territories of Science and Religion, Peter Harrison considered how people's conceptions of "science" and "religion" have changed over time. Territories is a helpful metaphor because it highlights how in our current era there is an assumption that these territories have not changed over time. History says otherwise. Hence, much current discussion about the relationship between "science" and "religion" is problematic. I like the "territory" metaphor because it captures the "colonising" mentality of adversaries competing for the same territory. On the other hand, I propose that science and religion are not territories but maps.