Paradigmatic Tendencies in Cartography and Mapping during the Scientific and Postmodern Periods

摘要

Within contemporary cartography this paper covers from traditional to post-modernist cartography. The first period includes scientific cartography - from Arthur Robinson to Alan MacEachren - where the following tendencies are proposed: ca rtographic language, cartographic communication, analytical cartography, and cartographic visualisation. In a second period, framed in a post-modernist context, alternative tendencies have been established, especially since the 1980s. Critical cartography arises with J.B. Harley and his successors offering an optional cartography and mapping in comparison with the scientific point of view. Nowadays, also in this so-called postmodern period, post-representational cartography is presented as another alternative trend to the scientific perspective. According to the difference of the study objects, approaches, research aims and results - which in this study are called "criteria of contrast" - all these tendencies can be considered as paradigmatic shifts during the developing of the discipline.