Bibliographic record
Abstract
As noted in the epigraph, a map was long ago seen as the map of the map, the map of the map, of the map, and so on endlessly. This recursive perspective on maps, however, has received little attention in cartography. Cartography, as a scientific discipline, is essentially founded on Euclidean geometry and Gaussian statistics, which deal respectively with regular shapes and more or less similar things. It is commonly accepted that geographic features are not regular and that the Earth’s surface is full of fractal or scaling or living phenomena: far more small things than large ones are found at different scales. This article argues for a new paradigm in mapping, based on fractal or living geometry and Paretian statistics, and – more critically – on the new conception of space, conceived and developed by Christopher Alexander, as neither lifeless nor neutral, but a living structure capable of being more living or less living. The fractal geometry is not limited to Benoit Mandelbrot’s framework, but tends towards Christopher Alexander’s living geometry and is based upon the third definition of fractal: A set or pattern is fractal if the scaling of far more small things than large ones recurs multiple times. Paretian statistics deals with far more small things than large ones, so it differs fundamentally from Gaussian statistics, which deals with more or less similar things. Under the new paradigm, I make several claims about maps and mapping: (1) the topology of geometrically coherent things – in addition to that of geometric primitives – enables us to see a scaling or fractal or living structure; (2) under the third definition, all geographic features are fractal or living, given the right perspective and scope; (3) exactitude is not truth – to paraphrase Henri Matisse – but the living structure is; and (4) Töpfer’s law is not universal, but the scaling law is. All these assertions are supported by evidence, drawn from a series of previous studies. This article demands a monumental shift in perspective and thinking from what we are used to in the legacy of cartography and GIS.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.042 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.020 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".