: Utilities of Fiction : Environmental Fiction :
Building maps using analogy

 

 

 

from page 30 of "The Flocking Party"

We also build cognitive maps by using other cognitive maps. Much in the way you use the laminated map to help with understanding a territory, we map unseen systems onto ones that we can see and examine. There are many examples of this that extend beyond the road atlas. In Stephen Jay Gould's book “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, he reveals a rarely discussed feature of Renaissance thinking, that there was a cosmic corollary between the systems of the human body and those of Earth (Gould 30). Renaissance thinkers sought analogies between the two, such as the circulatory and respiratory systems. Perhaps this was such an attractive idea, because it was easier to map and examine the human body, than to map the larger system of the Earth. The human body could be used as their analogy for the Earth. They only needed to search for signs that the two were similar to confirm their theory. Gould thinks that they believed in a metaphysical corollary between the two systems, that it wasn't simply mere analogy (Gould 30). But it was a case of mapping, nonetheless.

In my own work, I have been interested in how I can generate maps of unfamiliar systems by using maps of familiar ones. I believe that we need to examine manmade systems through a biological lens, where the study of technology and culture are remapped using our models of biology. How does culture reproduce? Mutate? Is there a kind of natural selection process for it? Does human consciousness affect this? How doesn't it? If culture is like a program that is passed from one person to the next, what degree of perceptual control could we really have? Perhaps biology can answer some of these questions. Even if the metaphor isn't exactly correct, it can still have enormous value. Metaphor is an instance of passing along perceptual tools from person to person.

Another way that we build cognitive maps is by sharing stories. You may wonder how a sequential representation could make an impression like the cognitive map, so lateral and networked. I have stated that in cognitive maps, the sharing of landmarks connects sequences. Stories also retrace their steps by reintroducing characters, props, and locations. These elements function as landmarks that reappear in plot sequences. These reiterations of plot elements or landmarks help to plot a path that winds and crosses itself, generating a cognitive map. A classic example of the way that stories do this is in mythology. The interplay between the gods and their domains built meshes of metaphor for connecting seen and unseen realms.
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